An American Girl
by nosecretsthisyear
Summary: In his posh New York City private schools, Edward was always an outcast. After high school, he plans to move to Paris to find himself, but his travels lead him to a young American girl who changes his mind about...well, everything. AU/AH, somewhat OOC.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Chapter One**

"Isn't this exciting, honey?" said Mother as we boarded the plane. She touched my shoulder lightly to urge me forward, past the smiling stewardess and down the narrow airplane aisle, as if I weren't eighteen years old and perfectly capable of finding my way to my seat without her guidance.

"Yes, Mother," I said.

And it was exciting, in a way, but mostly it just seemed strange. It was the first time I had been on a plane since I was twelve years old and my aunt took me down to Florida to visit my grandparents. The flight to Florida, as I remembered it, was so different from this one: that plane had been smaller, its insides more yellowed, and my seat had been in the very back row of coach, nestled snugly between a pair of screaming babies and the bathroom, with the engines roaring away in my ear the whole time.

This time, the plane was wider and more spacious, empty save for a few stern-looking businessmen in suits and totally silent except for the little electronic _ping!_ of a Blackberry alerting its owner of a new email. The whole experience felt new and strange to me.

"It's so quiet," I said, mostly to myself.

"That's just because no one else has boarded yet," said Father. "First class boards first."

"Oh. Right."

Our seats were A4, B4, and C4, and I reached them first. I slid my only carry-on item - my laptop case, with a small personal hygiene bag stowed away in one of the inside pockets - under the window seat and started to shuffle my way over to seat A4.

Just as I was sitting down, Mother said sweetly, "Oh, Edward, honey, let me have the window seat, will you? I like to be able to see out. Otherwise I'll be nauseous. And your father will need the aisle seat, so he can stretch out his leg if his knee starts to hurt."

And so it looked as if I would be planted firmly between Mother and Father, in blasted B4, for all eight hours of the flight from New York City to Barcelona, Spain. Fun times were sure to ensue.

As the plane sped down the runway for take-off, Father gripped the arms of his seat and pretended not to be scared on one side, while Mother closed her eyes and whispered prayers under her breath on the other. But I watched eagerly out the window as we flew up into the clouds, leaving the city far behind; I wasn't afraid. In fact, take-off was my favorite part.

"Oh, don't be absurd, Edward," said Father. "Take-off is the most dangerous part of flying, apart from landing. Almost all plane crashes occur during take-off or landing."

"Oh. Right," I said.

I didn't know how to explain that I just liked the feeling of power it gave me, the sense of moving with impossible speed, and then the miracle of flight as the plane was lifted in the air and the ground fell away below...

_Don't be absurd, Edward_, I reminded myself, my father's disdain ringing in my ears. _Only little kids stare out the window like that while the plane takes off. Grow up._

The flight was impossibly long. We changed timezones overnight. The flight attendents turned off all the lights and passed out pillows and blankets at ten o'clock at night our time to help us adjust to the timezone in Barcelona, where it was currently four in the morning. The seats in first class were much more spacious than those in coach, and my seat reclined fully; I was remarkably comfortable, considering that I was on an airplane and wedged between my parents, no less, but I couldn't sleep. I closed my eyes and thought about the weeks ahead.

Europe. Would it be all I had dreamed of? I had never been out of the country before, but over the past few years, I had become obsessed with the idea of expatriotism - moving away to Europe and never coming back. It seemed like the answer to all my problems.

Back home in New York, I had always felt a little out of touch, out of step with the world around me. I had been bullied and picked on since kindergarten, when Billy Craborchard made fun of me for wearing "church shoes" to school. Father always told me to "stand up like a man" to the bullies, but I never had the guts; Mother tried to solve my problems by plucking me out of school after school each time I had problems with the other kids. I had attended seven different private schools in fourteen years, each more private and exclusive than the last.

"This one will be better, sweetie," Mother would assure me every time I switched schools. "The people here are smart like you - they'll respect you for your brains and your talents. You won't be in with the riff-raff anymore."

She was right, in a way: there certainly was no "riff-raff" in the ultra-private schools she picked out for me, but these new, snotty kids didn't accept me any more than the public school kids had long ago. Each new batch of classmates found a whole new batch of reasons to hate me. In junior high, all the kids I went to school with were rich, but not quite as rich as my family, and they hated me for it. Freshmen year, I was an outcast because I wasn't rich enough. Sophomore and junior year were miserable because I didn't know anything about luxury cars or expensive liquor or how to talk to girls. Senior year, everyone else in my class spent their weekends going on coke binges and wrecking their fathers' Mercedes-Benzes while I was at home practicing piano.

In Europe, things would be different. I could play piano and wear nice clothes and drive a hybrid car without being called a "fag" or a "loser." European girls liked guys like me - sensitive, lonely, intellectual. And the girls would be smarter too, tall and skinny and pale, lithe in their fashionable clothes, with intelligent political opinions and at least a basic knowledge of art and music and literature. European girls would be cultured and sophisticated, not bleached-blonde and fake-tanned and dressed in hideous neon clothes that doubled as walking billboards for cheap brands like American Eagle, Hollister, and Aeropostle.

_American Eagle, indeed. _I would certainly be glad to be rid of America's overzealous patriotic spirit, too. The tacky eagle symbol, red-white-and-blue everything - Americans just had no _taste_. They couldn't recognize real style if it smacked them right between their beady little eyes.

No, Europe was where I really belonged. Europeans had brains, beauty, talent, and class. They would understand me.

So the previous fall, I had applied to all the usual: Duke, Harvard, Yale, Princetown, and Brown. Then, after devoting hours and hours to research, much of it in languages I wasn't quite fluent in, to choosing the best European college, I applied to the University of Paris in secret. When I was accepted, I broached the topic of going to school abroad with my parents.

They seemed to agree that I could use a change of scenery. Though they never said so aloud, I suspected that they both clung to the same hopes I did: that I could start over abroad, in a new country where no one knew my past or spoke my language. By the time I had formally accepted Paris's offer of admission, Mother was already making plans.

She booked a European cruise for the three of us in the second week of June. The cruise would be five days long, departing from Barcelona and making stops in Cannes, France, and Florence and Rome, Italy. Once we were back in Barcelona, we would take a plane to London and spend ten days there. Then we would all go to Paris, where my parents would spend another week seeing the sights with me.

Then Mother and Father would fly back home and in the remaining weeks before school started, I would be free to roam Paris on my own. A year or two earlier, the idea of being alone in a foreign country would have terrified me, but I was ready for it now. I had spent eighteen years of my life in New York with people who spoke the same language and lived in the same city and shared the same culture, and I hated it. I was ready for a change.

And my parents did nothing but encourage me, which gave me the strength to take the plunge. My father was my biggest critic and my mother was always trying to protect me, so I knew if they thought I could make it in Paris, I could. In fact, they weren't just _allowing_ me to go to Paris - they _wanted_ me to go.

"Oh, you'll just love Paris, honey," Mother would say over and over again. "It's so beautiful and the people there are just - well, they're not like us. Europeans are different from Americans. They're more like you and me." And then she would smile fondly at me, touching the side of my face in her motherly way.

Then one day when I was downstairs in the study when my parents thought I was upstairs in my room, I heard Mother and Father talking about me in the next room.

"Well, there's only a few more weeks in the school year, Carlisle," Mother was saying. "If he can just make it to Paris, he'll be fine."

"Yes," said Father, his voice soft and forgiving. "Paris is exactly what he needs. Every young man should travel abroad. Right now, he's lost and...confused - I can tell - but Europe will open his eyes. He'll figure everything out, find a nice European girl and settle down, and he'll be just fine."

Ever since then, I hadn't been able to get those words out of my head. At night, when I closed my eyes and waited for sleep, visions of the future flitted through my mind against the backdrop of my father's smooth, melodic voice: "_Paris is exactly what he needs... Europe will open his eyes... Find a nice European girl and settle down..."_

Now, trying to sleep on the flight to Barcelona, I closed my eyes and pictured myself fifteen years from now: confident and refined, in a suit with a cigar in hand; my tall, blonde, blue-eyed wife, smiling faintly with angular features and a model's build, wearing some expensive dress and heels. Maybe we would have a child...or two...or three... Or maybe not yet. Maybe I would wait until later to have kids. Maybe I would spend all of my twenties lounging around my bachelor's pad in Paris, traveling from city to city and country to country in the summers, meeting new beautiful women of all different nationalities...

For the next couple of hours, I dozed intermittently, waking whenever we hit a particularly bad patch of turbulence. I had just fallen into a deep enough sleep to dream when the flight attendents began walking up and down the aisles, taking away pillows and blankets and turning on all the lights. To my left, Mother was suddenly wide awake; she sat straight up in her seat and opened the window shade, and I winced in the sudden brightness, longing for the darkness and my dreams of European girls.

"Look, Edward," said Mother, nudging me in the shoulder. "You can see the ocean. Look how blue it is!"

"We must be getting closer," said Father.

A stewardess was pushing a little stainless steel cart down the aisle, pouring coffee and handing out little pastries and plates of scrambled eggs and bacon. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "What time is it?"

"It's one in the morning in New York," said Father. "Seven o'clock Barcelona time."

Jesus. No wonder my head hurt.

Breakfast helped revive me a little. I couldn't stomach the bacon and eggs, but I had a strawberry pastry and got some coffee in my system, and then I began to feel human again. Once the flight attendents had cleared all the empty plates and cups from breakfast, they handed out very official-looking slips of paper.

"What's this?"

"Oh, that's just for customs, dear," said Mother. "Just do this top part here - we don't need to declare anything yet."

I filled out the sheet as best I could, printing my name, birthdate, nationality, and so on in capital letters. Mother dug around in her bag for the cruise papers, and we listed the cruise ship as our "local address."

"Now, remember, Edward," said Mother as the plane began its descent. Outside, through the little plastic airplane windows, I could see craggy brown mountains, buildings crowded close together in a barren valley - we were flying over Spain now. "You're going to have to use your Spanish when we go through customs. Your father and I don't speak any."

"Neither do I, Mother," I reminded her.

"But you took Spanish I and II in high school."

"Yeah, freshman year. I don't remember much."

Actually, I remembered quite a bit, considering it had been three years since I had taken the class, and I had been studying my old Spanish textbooks to help refresh my memory, too. I still wasn't anywhere near conversational level, but I knew enough to get by. Still, I figured it was better to claim to know less of the language than I actually did, so that if I struggled with the language more than I was expecting to, at least my parents wouldn't be disappointed in me.

"Well," said Mother, patting my leg, "I'm sure it will all come back to you once you hear other people speaking it."

As we neared the airport, the pilot came over the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We are expected to arrive in Barcelona at 8:12 A.M. It is seventy-eight degrees fahrenheit, twenty-six degrees celsius in Barcelona, partly cloudy with a chance of rain."

Then a flight attendent came over the intercom, repeating what the pilot had just said in rapid Spanish.

The pilot and the flight attendent continued to talk this way, trading off between English and Spanish, until we were ready to land. The flight attendent hurried through a list of connecting flights in Spanish, and then a stewardess took over, going through the usual safety spiel in both languages. At my side, Mother gave a little shriek as the wheels emerged from the plane with a loud _bang_. As the plane touched down, she and Father were both gripping the armrests of their seats so tightly that their knuckles turned white.

My heart thudded in my chest, not with fear, but with excitement, hope. The plane sped down the runway, slowly skidding to a stop, and I couldn't tear my eyes away from the view out of the window - the strange shape of the jagged Barcelona landscape, so different from the New York City skyline. A new land.

_I did it_, I thought to myself as Mother and Father and I walked through the Barcelona airport, past huge windows looking out over the city._ I escaped._

Customs wasn't so bad. A woman at a desk asked us, in English, about our business in Barcelona. We told he we were going on a cruise, she nodded mutely, and stamped our passports. On the way to baggage claim, I opened my passport and looked inside, flipping past the page with my hideous photograph (I hadn't slept much the night before, and the sallow light in the photo combined with the dark circles under my eyes made me look like some kind of jaundiced serial killer) to the page she had stamped. I touched the stamp reverently: it was my first. I had finally made it out of the country.

After retrieving our bags, we took a cab to our hotel. I guess the cab driver could tell that we didn't really speak Spanish as soon as he saw us, because he didn't try to speak to us - he just began loading our bags into the trunk of the cab in silence. Mother and I got in the backseat and Father sat up front.

The cab driver got into the car and glanced around at us expectantly.

Mother nudged me in the arm. "Tell him where we're going, dear," she whispered.

"Hotel Nouvel?" I said uncertainly.

"Ah, si," said the cab driver, and then we were off.

He didn't say another word to us as we sped along the highway, past big concrete apartment buildings with clothes hanging in all the windows, smaller houses and buildings that lay squat along the ground, and billboards that looked exactly like the ones back home, except they were in Spanish. The radio was on and some kind of filthy rap song was playing; then a sickly-sweet song by an American pop star came on. It was all in English. I wondered if the driver understood what they were saying.

He didn't break his silence until we slowed down suddenly. A wreck was up ahead, with what looked like police officers in bright neon vests questioning a scruffy man standing up against the guardrail. The cab driver glanced around at us and narrowed his eyes at Mother.

"_Cinturon_," he said. He tugged at his seatbelt and then pointed to Mother. "_Cinturon_."

"Wha - ?"

"He wants you to put your seatbelt on," I said.

"Oh." She flushed pink and did as she was told, flashing the driver an apologetic smile. "Sorry," she said.

"_Lo siento_," I translated.

He shrugged and suddenly launched into a long explanation in Spanish. Like everyone else in Barcelona, he spoke Catalan (a local dialect that's sort of a blend of French and Spanish), which I didn't really understand, but I caught enough of what he said to put the pieces together. If the police saw that Mother wasn't wearing a seatbelt, they would fine the cab driver a hundred and fifty Euros, he said.

"_Si, si_," I said, just to show that I understood. Sort of.

A few minutes later we were driving through the heart of Barcelona, past rows and rows of tall buildings that reminded me of some of the older parts of New York. The driver parked on the curb next to a plaza, where at least twenty other cabs were parked in rows, just waiting for patrons. He unloaded our bags for us and then we paid him with some of the Euros we had gotten from the bank back in New York.

I looked around; none of the buildings nearby seemed to be any sort of hotel. Just behind us, a little street ran down between the buildings. There were big concrete blocks placed along the street's opening, to stop cars from coming through.

The driver pointed to the street, babbling in Catalan. I didn't catch a word of it, but I thought I knew what he meant.

"I think our hotel is down this way," I said. "He had to drop us off here because cars can't use this street."

Mother and Father nodded and, with worried looks on their faces, grabbed their bags and followed me down the street.

The street was very old and sort of cobbled, and my wheeled suitcase banged along behind me as I dragged it across the little worn-down stones. It was very early, and the whole city had a sort of misty gray early morning look about it. We were the only ones on the street.

There were little stores all up and down the street, but none of them were Hotel Nouvel.

"I don't see it," said Mother.

"Maybe you'd better ask somebody, son," said Father.

"I don't see anyone to ask."

"There's a man down there," said Mother, pointing to the end of the street, where an old, decrepit man was setting up some kind of souvenir stand.

"Alright," I sighed. "I'll be right back."

I left my bags with Mother and Father and walked down to the old man, rehearsing my lines in my head. As I approached, he looked up at me, fixing me with a pair of cloudy blue eyes. I cleared my throat and adjusted my glasses, hoping that I looked like a well-traveled, sophisticated young man, and not a stupid American tourist.

"_Perdon_," I said loudly, in case he was hard of hearing. "_Donde esta..." _Wait - was it _el_ or _la_? Oh, screw it. _"...Hotel Nouvel?"_

Apparently I didn't say it loud enough though (or my Spanish was even worse than I had feared), because the old man cupped one hand around his ear and leaned closer.

"_Donde esta Hotel Nouvel?" _I repeated, half-yelling now and feeling incredibly moronic.

"Ah," he said. He pointed one crooked finger back towards where my parents stood waiting. "_La calle alli, a la izquierda_."

"Oh. _Muchas gracias_," I said, and scurried away.

I knew _izquierda_ meant left, but the rest was a mystery to me. As I walked back towards my parents, I pulled out my iPhone and went to the translator app. According to the iPhone, the man had said, "The street there, to the left."

I looked up in the direction he had pointed. Sure enough, just to the left of my parents was a narrow alleyway. Maybe it led to the hotel?

"He said it was down this alleyway," I reported back to my parents. They looked over at the alley with raised eyebrows.

"What kind of hotel did you book for us, Esme?" Father laughed.

"Oh, I'm sure it will be fine," said Mother. But she glanced around uneasily as she picked up her bags and led the way down the dark alley.

The alley was not a cobbled road like the street it connected to; the street, or ground, or whatever it was we walked on, was not like any kind of pavement I had ever encountered before. It was hard like stone, but covered in a thin layer of sand and dirt, and it was uneven, with huge dips and mounds here and there. Occasionally there would be a baseball-sized hole in the ground through which you could see endless black depths leading into God knows what. Something smelled bad, like rotting food and a sewer combined.

More stores lined this little alleyway, but most of them were deserted and locked up at this hour. We reached the end of the alley and emerged onto another much bigger street called La Rambla, where crowds of people walked up and down past endless booths offering jewelry, scarves, magazines, souvenirs... But still no sign of Hotel Nouvel. The three of us stood staring around at all the old buildings and restaurants as Barcelona natives pushed past us and cab drivers parked up and down the street eyed us hungrily.

"Didn't you get some kind of directions to this place?" said Father crossly. He was staring to get irritated.

"Well, yes, but..." Mother slid her backpack off of one shoulder and started rifling through some of the loose papers stuffed inside. "Edward, dear, help me look through these papers - I know there's a map in here somewhere..."

She handed me a wad of papers and, with a groan, I started flipping through them. It was pointless. I was almost positive that there was no map in here, and all of this was just for the sake of appearances, so that Father wouldn't think she was an idiot for not bringing a map to a foreign country.

Bored and annoyed, I happened to look up just as one of the thousands of black-and-yellow cabs pulled up onto the curb just five or six feet away from me and came to a stop. All the doors opened at once and a cab driver got out and opened the trunk. A short, middle-aged man in shorts and a T-shirt and a baseball cap got out of the front seat, grinning stupidly. A tall, thin, middle-aged woman in mom shorts and a pink shirt climbed out of the backseat, and then a girl got out behind her.

The girl looked to be about my age; she must've been the man and woman's daughter. She was small and thin, pale with brown hair that swung about her face in a wild, unruly mass. Dark circles clung beneath her brown eyes, and her clothes looked wrinkled and mussed, as if she had slept in them.

Speaking of her clothes - they were hideous. She was wearing a neon tie-dyed Fudruckers T-shirt, pale blue nylon shorts, and bright pink tennis shoes. She pushed a lock of her dark hair behind one ear, revealing absurd ladybug earrings she must have received as a birthday present in the second grade.

As she got out of the car, she looked right up into my face, and our eyes locked for a moment; then she looked away, hurrying over to where her parents were unloading their luggage from the trunk of the cab. When she turned, I saw that her shorts read "Myrtle Beach, SC" across the ass.

They put their bags on the sidewalk in front of us in a neat row, and then the mother dug a map out of her purse and she and the girl disappeared behind it. They talked in low voices as the man stood on the sidewalk and checked his phone absently. He was the only person in sight with a cell phone out.

I realized I was staring and looked around at Mother and Father to see if I had been caught. I was stunned to find that both of them were watching the other family of three as well.

"We're in La Rambla right now," the girl was saying, her little voice ringing with authority, "so it must be right there, up that little alleyway, on the right."

"Yeah..." said the mother uncertainly. "I guess you're right... Everything looks so much _smaller_ than I expected - "

"Yep. Not like the open range in Texas, huh?" said the man, laughing goofily as he looked up from his cell phone.

And, sneaking glances at Mother and Father out of the corner of my eye, I knew the three of us were all thinking the exact same thing: _Americans_.

"Um, excuse me," said Mother daintily. The three other Americans looked up as she pushed past me and moved closer to them. "We seem to have lost our map, and we can't find our hotel - could we look at yours just for a second?"

"Oh, sure," said the mother. She tore the map out of her daughter's hands and handed it to Mother. "Go right on ahead."

"Thank you so much." Mother took the map from them delicately and opened it up. She glanced over at me. "Edward, come look at this for a second, will you, dear?"

I came to stand behind Mother, studying the map over her shoulder. I found La Rambla and the plaza the cab driver had parked next to and used that to find our current location. (La Rambla was a wide strip of booths and street performers, with two narrow streets running along either side of it; we were currently standing on the sidewalk beside one of these two streets.) According to the map, Hotel Nouvel was...well, right in the alley we had just come from.

"Oh, how silly," said Mother. "We must have just overlooked it. Thank you so much," she said, handing the map back to the American mother.

"No problem," said the woman. "Where are you all staying again?"

"Hotel Nouvel."

"No way!" the woman burst out obnoxiously. "That's where _we're_ staying!"

"Oh. Well..." Mother glanced around at the three of them - the woman, all smiles in her suburban mom get-up; the man, smirking under his baseball cap and chomping on a piece of gum; the young girl, in her neon T-shirt, her full lips shiny with sparkly pink lip gloss - and visibly swallowed her distaste. "How nice," she managed finally.

"I'm Renee Dwyer," said the woman, grabbing Mother's hand and shaking it. "And this is my husband, Phil, and my daughter, Bella."

"Nice to meetcha," said Phil heartily. He shook Father's hand vigorously, then patted Mother on the back in a thoroughly masculine gesture; she flinched.

"Hi," said Bella. She smiled at all three of us, her gaze lingering on me.

Oh God. She would probably try to make friends with me, since we were the only two kids here. Oh God, no, please. I looked away.

"Oh, my. What a lovely family," said Mother with a slightly hysterical smile. "Well, uh... My name is Esme Cullen and this is my husband, Carlisle, and my son, Edward."

I stood up straighter and adjusted my glasses in what I hoped was a sophisticated manner as I was introduced. But what did it matter, really? Why should I care what these annoying American tourists thought of me?

"So where you folks from?" asked the Phil guy as we headed off down the alleyway again, dragging our suitcases across the uneven ground behind us.

"New York," said Father.

The Bella girl's eyes lit up. "New York? That's so cool! I _love_ New York!"

"You've been there?" asked Mother, only slightly disparagingly.

"Just once," said Bella. "But I love it. I'm going to school there in the fall."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. NYU class of twenty-fourteen! Woot!" she said, with a little fist pump of excitement.

Jesus. As if there weren't already enough obnoxious college kids in New York. Thank God I was never going back.

"We're from Kentucky," said the woman, Renee. "Well - Bella and I are, at least. Phil's from Texas. Actually, we're moving to Florida once we get back home."

Oh God. The only people who could possibly be more obnoxious than Kentuckians, Texans, or Floridians would have to be a combination of all three. Of course they would be the only other English speakers in the whole damn city.

Father seemed to be thinking the same thing. "So you guys are real globe-trotters, huh?" he said sardonically.

Renee missed the sarcasm. "Oh, yeah," she laughed. "My first husband is from Washington - the state, not the capital - so Bella and I lived there for a while. Then after my divorce, we lived in Arizona for a couple of years. Then I met Phil and we all moved back to Kentucky. I've got people there, ya know."

"Fascinating," said Mother.

It was only then that Renee seemed to pick up on our disdain. She stopped walking and her smile faded as she peered at Mother with a sort of perplexed sadness. Her eyes crinkled around the edges as she frowned.

Bella and Phil stopped, too. I figured they were offended, but I didn't care. _Good riddance_, I thought. I kept on walking, keeping in step with Father, with Mother trailing behind us.

We had gone about ten feet when we heard Phil call out behind us, "Hey! Where you folks going? The hotel's right here!"

Mother, Father, and I all turned around in perfect synchronization to see Phil, Renee, and Bella crowded around a big wooden door. Above the door in gold letters were the words, "Hotel Nouvel."

"Oh, how silly!" said Mother, forcing a smile. "We must have just overlooked it."

We followed the Dwyers (a hideous name for hideous people) into the lobby of the hotel, which was very small and compact, but beautiful inside. The sitting area next to the lobby was furnished with lots of antique-looking furniture and huge expansive paintings of the city. A big wooden staircase wound its way around the corner of the lobby, next to the front desk, and an old-fashioned elevator with glass doors stood across from it.

A bald man and a dark, hispanic-looking woman were working the front desk, and they visibly sized us all up as we walked it, most likely trying to decide what language to speak to us. I remembered Father saying something on the way over here about how everyone who works in hotels in cities like this has to speak multiple languages fluently, because so many different people from different countries travel here.

But then Renee yelled, "Hi!" and gave a little wave - effectively ending the question of nationality.

Mother sighed. "Americans," she muttered under her breath, so quietly that only Father and I heard.

"Hello," said the woman at the front desk as we approached. "Are all of you together?"

"Oh, no, no," said Mother quickly. "We're a separate family."

"Oh, okay. Bob will speak with you."

So Bob, the bald man, whose accent was thicker than the woman's, checked us in while the woman waited on the Dwyers. As the man gave Mother directions to our room on the second floor, my gaze wandered around the room. There was a mirror on the opposite wall, next to the elevator, and I was startled at the sight of my reflection: my nice khaki slacks and my favorite pink button-up shirt were all wrinkled (I had been wearing them since we had left New York yesterday afternoon, after all) and my Sperries were all dirty from walking through all that sandy crap out in the alleyway. My hair was rumpled and sticking up in a few places, and my eyes looked bleary and bloodshot behind my glasses. I looked horrible.

I was staring at my reflection in the mirror across the room, attempting to smooth down my hair and brush the wrinkles out of my shirt, when I happened to notice Bella watching me. She blushed and looked away, embarrassed because I caught her looking; I blushed and looked away, embarrassed because she caught me in a moment of vanity. The whole thing was just very embarrassing all around.

To spare myself as much humiliation as possible, I turned away from Bella, focusing on my own family instead. "Could you put our bags somewhere safe for the time being?" Mother was saying to Bob. "We're not really ready to go to our rooms just yet - we kind of wanted to go get some lunch somewhere and maybe walk around the city a bit - "

"Oh, that's a great idea!" said Renee. She looked absolutely delighted, as if we had invited them along. "Isn't that a great idea, Phil?"

Phil looked up from his phone. "Huh?"

"But we don't want to take our bags with us," Mother went on, talking over the Dwyers. "So..."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course," said Bob. "We have a special room for bags. Come."

He fished a key out from under the desk and then walked out of the lobby through a back door. We all followed him through another smaller lobby-type room with a single vending machine and water fountain to another small hallway. On one side of the hallway was an open door leading into a bathroom; on the other side was a bigger, heavier door that Bob unlocked with the key.

Bob opened the door and stepped into the tiny room. On one end of the room was a heat pump, which made the whole area stiflingly hot; on the other end was a cart piled high with suitcases. He took our bags one by one and piled them neatly along one wall. "When you need these bags," he said, "come to me. I will get them for you."

"Honey," said Father. "Where's your backpack?"

"Oh, I left it out in the lobby," said Mother with a wave of her hand. "My hands were full so I decided to just come back for it. I'll go get it."

She scurried away just as Bob stepped out of the room and started to close the door. "Hey, wait," I said. "My mother has one more bag. She'll be right back."

Bob nodded curtly and leaned against the wall to wait, keeping the door propped open with his foot.

An awkward silence descended as the six of us waited for Mother to return. Father and I didn't talk much even to each other - at home, we mostly relied on Mother to keep conversation going - and the Dwyers were apparently uncomfortable in our presence.

"So Edward," said Phil finally, "you play ball?"

I started to ask what kind of "ball" he meant, but realized that it didn't matter, as I didn't play _any_ sports. "Uh...no," I said awkwardly.

"You run track?"

"No."

"Swimming?"

"No, not really."

"Tennis? Badminton? Croquet?"

Renee smacked Phil in the arm, flashing him a warning glare. "What?" he mouthed, throwing up his hands in exasperation.

For some reason, my eyes sought out Bella automatically; she was standing in the open doorway of the bathroom, staring fixedly at the ground and gnawing on her lower lip. She didn't seem to be aware of our exchange.

I turned to Phil. "No, I don't really do sports," I said.

"Oh. Well, what do you do, then?"

He didn't say it nastily, but the question was sort of nasty in itself. On its most basic level, it implied that there was nothing worthwhile for a man to do in life other than play sports, which was exactly the mindset I hated most about guys back home - about American society. This man, this short, stout, Phil Dwyer from Texas, was the physical embodiement of everything I had been trying to escape.

In Europe, guys did more than just play sports, and if they didn't happen to play sports, they weren't looked down on for it. Hell, football didn't even _exist_ here; there was _no such thing _as March Madness. And we weren't in America anymore, damn it - this wasn't Kentucky, or Texas, or Florida. This was Europe, and things were different here.

Here, Phil Dwyer would not get the best of me. I was not athletic, but I was well-dressed and well-read and fluent in French, and here, I had the upper hand.

"I play piano," I said. "And I speak French. And, uh...I read a lot."

For a moment, the look on Phil's face was totally blank. Then he looked like he was going to laugh. Renee punched him in the arm again, as a precautionary measure.

I looked over at Bella again, and this time she was looking at me, smiling a little in this indecipherable way. I couldn't tell if it was a smile of derision or of fondness.

Just as I had decided she was mocking me, Mother reappeared. She was wringing her hands out, her eyes darting back and forth in a nervous frenzy.

"Carlisle, are you sure you didn't grab my backpack?" she said.

"Yes, I'm sure. I had my backpack and my suitcase, and that's all."

"Edward, dear, did you - "

"No, Mom. I thought you said you left your backpack in the lobby?"

"Well..." She pushed her way past us to open the door to the little room and peer inside. "I thought I did, but it's not out there now."

"Oh, no!" said Renee. "Someone must have taken it."

"But I left it in the lobby! Surely no one would..."

"You can see clear through those front doors, with the windows in 'em," said Phil, shaking his head. "Somebody musta seen you leave it there. They musta come into the lobby while we were all in here."

Mother shot a pleading glance in Bob's direction.

Bob shrugged helplessly. "It is possible," he said. "There is much crime here in the city, I am afraid. There are people always waiting to steal from tourists. You should be more careful."

Mother was so indignant that I half expected her to stomp her foot and throw a tantrum, toddler-style. "But this is a nice hotel!" she shrieked tearfully - the very picture of a snobbish woman from a wealthy family, furious because her money couldn't save her this time. "Surely nothing could... No one would..."

Bob was nonplussed. "Miss, I am sorry, but - "

"But all my _things_ were in there!"

"Bella, where are you going?"

We all followed Renee's gaze to see Bella hurrying down the hallway. "I'm gonna go look outside," she said. "Maybe whoever took it is still out there."

"Bella, sweetheart, be careful - "

But she was gone before anyone could talk her out of it.

"Edward, go with her," said Mother. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she shoved me in Bella's direction. "She shouldn't be alone out there."

Oh God.

"But - why - I mean..." I couldn't figure out how to say what I meant ("Why do _I_ have to do it?") without offending Renee and Phil, who were standing right in front of me. "Shouldn't someone else - "

"I need to stay here and make some phone calls. I had credit card numbers in there. You go. Hurry, catch her!"

And so it began.

"Jesus Christ," I said to myself, and ran after Bella.

**Footnotes:**

**1. La Rambla: a street in central Barcelona, popular with both tourists and locals alike. A 1.2 kilometer-long tree-lined pedestrian mall between Barri Gòtic and El Raval, it connects Plaça Catalunya in the center with the Christopher Columbus monument at Port Vell. **

**(Definitions from good ol' Wikipedia.)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Chapter Two**

I ran down the hall and through the side lobby, hoping Bella hadn't already gone. If I didn't catch her and something happened to her, Mother and Father would have my head. I didn't need another reason to feel like a disappointment to add to the already monumental list.

Luckily, she was just reaching the front door of the main lobby when I saw her.

"Bella!" I called. "Wait!"

She turned and saw me there, and her mouth fell open in surprise. "Hello," she said.

"Uh...hi," I said awkwardly. "Uh... I just... I thought I should come with you. I mean..." I swallowed hard and quoted my mother: "You shouldn't be alone out there."

She sighed. "Okay, fine."

And with that, she flung the front door open herself and stepped outside before I could open the door for her. Oh well. She probably wasn't used to being treated like a lady, seeing as how she really wasn't one.

The gray sky was spitting light rain as we stepped out into the alley, turning the sand and dirt into a sticky mush that clung to the bottoms of my shoes. Good thing I had decided to wear my old Sperries and not my brand new white ones; they would have been ruined.

"_Perdon_!" said Bella, stopping the first person she saw in the alley: a woman carrying a baby. "_Un hombre con un mochila?"_

The woman stared at her, bewildered by her broken Spanish and distinctly American accent. The neon tie-dyed T-shirt probably didn't help much either.

"_Un hombre_!" shouted Bella in frustration. "_Con un mochila_!"

I was just about to step in and speak some real Spanish to this poor woman when another girl walking by stopped. "_Si, si_," she said to Bella, pointing down to the end of the alley, where it opened up into La Rambla. "_Alla_."

Bella and I both turned and looked to see a man nearing the place where the alley intersected La Rambla, glancing furtively to each side. Mother's backpack was slung over one shoulder casually.

"That's it," I said. "That's Mother's backpack."

He was far enough away that we could never catch him if he started running, and I knew he would run if he figured out we were onto him. He wouldn't even have to run very far; once he reached the center of La Rambla, he could blend into the crowd of people with ease and we would never find him. I figured our best bet would be to follow him at a distance, keeping our eye on the bag, and then maybe we would come across a policeman or someone else who could help us.

"Look," I said to Bella in a low voice, "if he runs, we'll never catch him, so lets just sneak up behind - "

She ignored me and ran headlong down the alley, towards the man. At the sound of her loud footfalls, he turned and saw her coming towards him and his eyes widened.

Just in case he had any doubt that she was after him, she yelled, "Hey, asshole! Give that back!"

And then he was running, too.

"Oh, goddamn it," I muttered, and ran after Bella.

Bella chased the thief out of the alley and across the sidewalk where we had first met the Dwyers. The thief ran out into traffic and she followed.

"Bella! Stop!"

But it was too late; she wasn't listening to me, or maybe she couldn't hear. Didn't she know that traffic was different here? That cars weren't as careful and forgiving of deviant pedestrians as they were back in America? What a stupid, stupid, _stupid_ girl.

Or maybe she was just crazy. Or brave.

Tires squealed and horns honked as cars slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting Bella and the thief as she chased him into moving traffic. A cab driver rolled down his window and yelled at her in Spanish. One car nearly hit her but stopped just in time, so that its front bumper nudged her hip lightly.

"Sorry!" I heard her say, holding up a hand to the driver of the car. "I'm sorry! _Lo siento_!"

And she kept running.

What was _wrong_ with her? What the hell did she think she was going to do if she actually caught the man? Wrestle him to the ground and take back the backpack? We were in _Barcelona_, for God's sake! The man would probably whip out a knife and stab her or something.

So now I had to make a snap decision: to follow her and try to help, or stay behind and let her run off on her crazy death mission alone.

Back home in America, I hadn't been stupid or crazy or brave. I had never done anything remotely noteworthy in my life. And while this girl was nothing special - dreadfully average, in fact - I still felt an inexplicable urge to protect her.

"Jesus," I groaned. There was no way around it: I was going to have to follow her across traffic. I didn't have time to wait for a red light.

I had been in this country for less than an hour, and I already felt like I was living someone else's life. I guess you should be careful what you wish for and all that. Although when I had pictured myself embarking on wild European adventures, I hadn't figured an American girl wearing pink lip gloss, absurd ladybug earrings, and a tie-dyed T-shirt into the equation.

I waited for a gap in traffic, and then I ran as hard as I could, staring straight ahead so I couldn't see the cars coming at me and chicken out. One car got so close that I felt the back of my shirt ruffle as it sped by me; a motorcyle headed straight for me had to swerve to miss me at the last second.

And then I was on the other side of the street, panting and sweating and gasping for breath, but all in one piece, thankfully. I gave myself a second to catch my breath, leaning forward to brace my hands against my knees, and then I searched the crowded sidewalk for Bella.

Her bright multi-colored tie-dyed shirt and billows of dark hair made her easy to spot; she was several yards ahead of me, still in hot pursuit of the thief. There was nothing for me to do but keep running after her. I pushed my way past Barcelona natives and other tourists, tripping and stumbling and apologizing as I went.

We were running parallel to La Rambla, and the crowd on the sidewalk was beginning to thin out as we neared the end of La Rambla. Soon, we were nearing the huge monument at the end of La Rambla, around which a busy traffic intersection was built. This road was much more dangerous than the small roads we had crossed earlier; there was no way we could run blindly across traffic without being hit here.

"Bella! Stop! Just let it go!"

And then the incredible happened: she stopped.

I was so surprised that this crazy American girl actually listened to me that I almost smacked into her. I stopped running at the last second, my feet slipping along the dirty sidewalk and kicking up dust.

"Jesus," I panted. "What - "

Then I looked up and saw that she was holding the backpack.

"How - what - "

"He dropped it," said Bella, smirking in triumph. "He threw it down when he figured out that I was about to catch him. He actually looked kind of scared."

_Well, I'd be pretty scared too if some crazy teenage girl dressed in hideous mismatching clothes with wild hair was chasing me down_, I thought to myself.

Out loud, I said, "Okay, well... Thanks."

As I reached over to take the backpack from her, a strange look came across her face suddenly - a wistful sort of smile.

"Hold on," she said, pulling the backpack out of my grasp. "Did you really follow me all the way out here?"

"Well... Yeah."

"Across traffic and everything?"

"I had to, didn't I? I mean..." I shrugged and adjusted my glasses - a nervous habit. "I wasn't going to let you chase down a thief alone."

Her smile widened, revealing rows of straight white teeth. I tried to imagine what she would look like in the braces she must have worn at some point, but suddenly all I could think about was how much prettier she looked when she smiled.

I shook off those thoughts and took the backpack from her. "Anyway, thanks a lot," I said. "I hate to think what my vacation would be like if my mother lost this. She'd make Father and I miserable."

"Yeah, mothers have the tendency to do that sometimes," said Bella, grinning. For a moment I felt a sort of vague affection for her - but then she tucked her hair behind one ear, and the sight of the garish ladybug earrings destroyed all feelings of fondness I might have had for her otherwise.

I slung the backpack over one shoulder and we started walking back the way we came, leaving at least a foot or two of space between us. We were walking against the flow of the crowd, and we had to keep dodging people here and there. Once we both had to move in to let people by so much that our shoulders smacked together.

Bella giggled nervously, blushed, and jumped away. I apologized and adjusted my glasses again.

"So," I said as we waited for a red light to cross the street, "that was pretty intense - you chasing that guy down, I mean. I've never seen anybody run across traffic like that before."

"I spent a whole summer in Philly once," said Bella, shrugging. "That's nothing."

I frowned at the memory of my own week-long trip to Philadelphia with my parents. I was fourteen at the time and my mother was desperate to see some kind of Galileo exhibit at a museum there. Almost everything we wanted to see was within walking distance, but Mother had insisted on taking cabs everywhere - she said it was dangerous to walk there. "I'm surprised there aren't more hit-and-runs here than there are," she said once, shaking her head as she watched hoards of pedestrians jaywalking through the cab window.

"Yeah, I guess traffic gets pretty hairy there," I said.

Bella laughed. "_That's_ an understatement." Her eyes softened as she turned to look at me. "You've been there?"

I remembered my mother asking her the same question about New York just half an hour ago, her tone much more biting than Bella's was now. "Just once," I said, repeating Bella's words from earlier. "But I liked it."

"It's a cool place."

Traffic stopped and we crossed the street, hurrying across La Rambla to cross the second street, too, before the light changed. Then we were walking down the alley to our hotel, in silence except for the rhythmic crunching of our footsteps in the sand and the dirt. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound completely stupid. My own silence was stifling.

It reminded me of every high school experience I had ever had.

We walked into Hotel Nouvel to find both sets of our parents sitting in the lobby, looking tense. Mother was chattering frantically on her cell phone, Father was staring at the ground, and Phil and Renee were whispering to each other. They all looked up and saw Bella and I standing in the doorway simultaneously, and then all four sets of eyes were fixed on the backpack I was holding out to Mother.

"Oh, honey, thank you so much!" shrieked Mother, flipping the phone shut without saying goodbye to whatever poor soul was on the other end of the line. She rushed across the lobby to me, taking my face in both hands and kissing my cheeks in the most embarrassing way possible, and then she ripped the backpack out of my hands. "Oh, where did you find it?"

"Some as - sleazebag took it, but we chased him down and got it back," said Bella, and then the smirk returned.

Mother's and Father's faces clouded over in horror, but Phil and Renee were beaming at their daughter.

"That's my girl!" said Renee proudly. "Tough as nails."

"Nobody messes with The Swan," said Phil, quite inexplicably.

"Well, the important thing is that everyone is safe," said Mother. Then she sat down on the nearest sofa and began rifling through the backpack, checking to make sure that all her stuff was still there. "Now all that's left to do is to call the credit card company and the cruise line and tell them that - "

"But your credit card's right there, Mother," I said, pointing to the little blue piece of plastic in her hand.

"Yes, but the thief could have taken it out and written down the number, couldn't he? And I had copies of our passports in here, and the papers for the cruise - he could have taken any of those serial numbers and sold them or - "

"Mrs. Cullen," said Bella, "honestly, I don't think he had time to get the numbers. He had the backpack over one shoulder and he was just walking down the street when we caught him."

"Oh, but we can't be too careful now, can we?" said Mother in her infamous "I'm-right-and-you're-wrong-so-just-stop-talking-before-you-make-yourself-look-even-stupider-than-you-are" voice. She pursed her lips and turned to me. "Now, Edward, dear. Why don't you run on down to the police station and file a police report for me? Please, dear," she added as an afterthought.

I stared. "Mother, how am I supposed to file a police report? I don't know how to - "

"Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to figure it out for yourself, dear. Your father and I don't speak Spanish - "

"Neither do I!"

"Oh, nonsense. Now, don't be silly. Run along to the police station for Mother, please, dear?"

"I don't even know where the police station is!"

"Well, neither do I, dear," said Mother, so coolly that I wanted to hit her. "I'm sure the lady at the front desk would be glad to help you with that."

Clenching my fists at my sides to conceal my rage, I stalked out of the lobby and down the short hallway to the front desk. This was so stupid! What good would a police report do? We got the backpack back, for God's sake! Technically, nothing was stolen. And even if it was, we would only be in this country for one more day! Mother had already made me go chasing after Bella From Kentucky-slash-Arizona-slash-Washington-slash-Florida Who Apparently Loves Tie-Dye and Ladybugs, and now she was going to make me go down to the police station and humiliate myself by attempting to speak Spanish when the most advanced level of the language I had ever learned was how to conjugate a verb in the present tense. Little kids probably knew more Spanish than I did, just from watching Dora the freaking Explorer during snack time every day.

Stupid! The whole thing was so goddamn stupid!

The lady at the desk tried to give me directions to the police station, but I was so annoyed with my mother that I had a hard time processing what she was saying. As far as I could tell, all I had to do was walk down the alley until I reached La Rambla, turn right, cross the plaza, and there it was. It seemed almost too easy to be true.

"Alright," I said crossly, hovering in the doorway of the lobby, "I'm going. What do you want me to tell them?"

Mother looked perplexed. "Just tell them what happened, dear."

I rolled my eyes and started to walk away, but her voice stopped me.

"Oh, and Edward, dear? Your father and I are going to take a cab down to the port, to see if someone from Royal Caribbean is there. I called the phone number they gave me but no one is answering, and I need to tell them that some of our information was stolen."

_Breathe in, out. In, out, _I reminded myself. _Calm down_.

"So we probably won't be here when you get back," she babbled on, oblivious. "You're on your own as far as lunch goes. You have some Euros, don't you?"

"Yes, Mother," I said through gritted teeth.

"Good. Now run along, dear."

Why did she have to be so goddamn..._emasculating_ all the time? No wonder all the kids at school made fun of me all the time. No wonder they all called me "fag" and "queer" and "gay-face" - all my life, my mother had been methodically destroying what little sense of masculinity I had.

But I kept my thoughts to myself, just like I always did; instead of telling her how angry I was and how ridiculous she was being, I just turned and walked away. I wanted to slam the heavy front doors behind me, but I didn't have the guts. So I just walked down the deserted alley alone, with the front desk lady's hand-drawn map crumpled up into a warm little ball of paper in my fist, as it began to rain.

I was about halfway down the alleyway and my shirt was already soaked when I heard a voice and pounding footsteps behind me.

"Edward! Wait!"

I turned to see Bella running towards me. She had put her hair up, and now her ponytail swung neatly behind her; it was a relief after watching all that wild hair falling around her face all morning. She half-smiled at me and started to say something - but then her foot caught on one of the holes in the ground and she went sprawling.

_God_, I thought as I headed back towards her. I thought I was rid of her already! Jesus.

But Father always said it behooves your own personal reputation to treat all people kindly and be polite to everyone, so I would be. "You okay?" I asked, offering her a hand.

She was still lying there on the ground, in all the dirt and sand (which was quickly becoming a grainy, mushy sort of mud), as if to wallow in her embarrassment. When she finally looked up at me, she was blushing furiously. "Oh yeah," she said, "I'm fine. Just extremely clumsy."

She took my hand and I helped her up. Her knees were all muddy and scraped up; one long scrape was oozing blood. The palms of her hands were muddy, too, from the way she had caught herself, and she wiped them on her shorts. Classy.

"You should go back inside," I said. So she wouldn't suspect that I was just trying to get rid of her, I gestured to her knee and pointed out, "You're bleeding."

She shook her head and brushed at her knee, knocking the dirt and sand away. "It's okay. I've had worse."

There was an awkward silence as I realized that I had no idea what she was doing out here. Did she think we could just hang out or something? Hadn't she heard Mother giving me orders back there in the lobby, treating me like an unreasonable preschooler? How could she miss it?

"Well, um... I was just going to go to the police station, so - "

"I know," she said, nodding. "I was gonna go with you."

"Oh. Well. Um. That's okay - I mean, I'll be fine - "

"No, you shouldn't be alone. And you said you didn't speak much Spanish so..." She shrugged. "I thought maybe I could help you."

"Well, see...the thing is, I do speak Spanish... I mean, I speak Spanish pretty well. I just, uh - I was just saying that to - to get out of it," I stammered.

God! Why was I so awkward? Why was she making me so nervous? Why should I feel intimidated by _her_, of all people - a silly teenage girl whose IQ was probably a good fifty points below mine.

"Oh," said Bella. "Well, still..." She shrugged again, smiling shyly this time. "You could use some company, right?"

_No. I would rather be alone than be with you._

But of course I couldn't say that.

"Well, yeah," I said, my voice too high-pitched and hysterical, giving me away. "But - but you're hurt, I mean, you're injured, and everything - there's no need for you to go if you're - in pain - "

"I'm not in pain. Trust me, I'll be fine," said Bella. "If I don't die of humiliation, that is."

Though the wording of the statement suggested that she was joking, the look on her face and her tone of voice were both completely serious. I studied her carefully for a moment, squinting at her through the rain and trying to decide if I was supposed to laugh or not.

Just as I decided that she was actually upset, she giggled. So it _was_ a joke, then! Tricky, tricky. I tried to laugh too, but it was a nervous sound.

"Come on," said Bella, punching me in the arm playfully as she walked past me. "Lets go find _la policia_, shall we?"

"Do you want to go get an umbrella first?"

She stopped and gave me this confused look. "I didn't _bring_ an umbrella." She paused, then added thoughtfully, "I don't even _own_ an umbrella."

I stared. "You don't own an _umbrella_?"

She shrugged. "What's the point? A little water never hurt anybody."

She turned and walked off down the alley, apparently unphased by the deluge around her. No _umbrella_? What kind of backwoods lunatic doesn't even own an _umbrella_?

We retraced our steps from earlier, down the alley to La Rambla, and then we turned right and walked another block or so, under the decorative trees that lined the sidewalk for cover from the rain. Then we reached a busy road that I recognized from before; it was the same road we had taken to get to our hotel. We waited for a break in traffic, and then we ran across the street.

Then we were in a big open square. "Where to now?" asked Bella.

I shrugged.

"Can I see the map?"

We sat down on a bench and Bella studied the hand-drawn map, which was simply a series of lines and a big square labeled "La Plaza de Catalunya," with nothing else drawn or labeled nearby as reference points. At the very back of the big Plaza square was a smaller square, labeled "LA POLICIA" in big letters.

"So we need to find the Plaza de Catalunya then, right?" said Bella.

"Sure."

Bella wasted no time in asking for directions. A young woman carrying an enormous black umbrella was walking by right in front of us, and Bella leapt to her feet and stopped her. "_Perdon_," said Bella, trying her best not to butcher the language and still failing, "_donde esta la Plaza de Catalunya_?"

The woman stared at Bella from underneath her umbrella. "This is it," she said dryly, in perfect English.

"Oh," said Bella. "Well, um - thank you."

The woman rolled her eyes and walked away, and Bella turned back to me, blushing only slightly. "Well," she said, "we found the plaza. This is it!"

Fighting the urge to roll my eyes as well, I removed my glasses and wiped them on my shirt. "Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? I mean, it's a big open square. Obviously it's a plaza."

"Yeah. I guess," said Bella quietly. "So anyway... I guess the police station will be back here behind the plaza, then."

"I guess so."

I put my glasses back on and we walked across the plaza. It was very pretty, the picturesque ideal of a Spanish plaza, but because of the rain, we were the only ones there. I made a mental note to come back and take pictures later when the weather cleared up, before we boarded the ship tomorrow.

"I don't see anything," I said, staring at a big museum-like building directly behind the plaza, where the police station should have been. "That doesn't look like a police station to me."

"No, I don't think it is... Oh, wait. Look, there it is!"

I followed her gaze and her pointing finger (how rude) to a set of wide stairs leading down into the ground. On the concrete below-ground landing, there was a set of glass doors; a hand-made paper sign on one of the doors read, "_L'estacio de policia_."

The police station was very much like a cellar: cool and dark and mostly concrete, with sparse furnishings and dim flourescent lighting overhead. The room seemed very long and wide as Bella and I crossed it to the desk in the very back of the room, where two officers in uniform sat looking bored.

"I'll take care of this," I muttered to Bella as we approached the desk. Then, to the policemen, I said, "_Hablan Ingleis_?"

They both shook their heads simultaneously. One pointed to a woman sitting at a plastic folding card table in the corner of the room. "You talk with her," he said in stilted English.

The woman looked to be middle-aged, too tan with saggy, freckled skin. Her hair was dyed a fake blonde color and she was wearing way too much eye make-up. She was not in uniform, but dressed in ragged jeans and a shrunken-looking T-shirt that exposed her midriff slightly. The more closely I inspected her, the more I began to doubt that she was even qualified to wear a uniform.

"Hello," she said in a thick Spanish accent as we approached. "Please, sit down."

Bella and I looked at each other, then sat down in the plastic lawn chairs that were set up in front of her table.

"Yes, how can I help?" said the woman.

"Uh - well - we're tourists here, from the United States - "

"Yes, yes," said the woman, as if I were boring her with obvious details.

"And, uh, my mother - her backpack was stolen this morning."

"Ah, yes." She nodded wisely. "There is much of the stealing in Barcelona, I am afraid. It happens many times."

"So I've heard. So my mother wanted me to file a police report."

"Ahhh. Yes."

"Can you help me?"

The woman started to shake her head, but stopped herself. "I can, yes. I do not know if you should though. The police, in things such as this, we cannot do very much. We cannot stop all the stealing that is going on, yes? You understand."

"Right. But, see, the stealing - it's already happened, so we're not really asking you to stop it, we're just - "

"You want to get your things back? It is not possible, I am afraid - "

"Actually," Bella cut in, "we got the backpack back."

The woman stared.

"The man who took it dropped it on the ground," Bella went on, "so...we got it back."

"Then why do you want to make report?" said the woman, frowning so that her leathery skin puckered here and there.

Bella turned to me, as if to ask the same question. I sighed.

"I don't - my mother told me to, it's not my idea."

Suddenly, the woman threw her head back in a cackling laugh so loud and raucous and completely unexpected that both Bella and I jumped in surprise. "Well, you tell your mama you made a report, okay? Okay. Enjoy Barcelona!" she shrieked in her raspy voice. And with that, we were dismissed.

"Well," I said as we took the stairs up into the plaza, out of the dark, damp cellar of the police station, "that was helpful."

"What else can they do?" said Bella. "That kind of petty crime happens all the time here. They can't stop all of it. And technically, nothing was stolen - since we got the backpack back, I mean."

It was the exact same thought I had had just a few minutes ago, but I bristled upon hearing the words coming from _her_. What the hell did she know about Barcelona? She was just some hick from Kentucky, or Texas, or wherever the hell she was from. Her mom probably won some stupid prize at work for picking out the closest bracket during March Madness - round-trip plane tickets to Spain and a hotel room in Barcelona for three days, or something. She was most likely completely oblivious to the significance of all the things around her: the architecture, the fashion industry, the history, the culture. She had no idea where she was - not really. She couldn't appreciate it. And I had dreamed of being here, in this city, in this country, in this continent, for so long...

She didn't deserve to be here. None of the American Dwyers did. It made me sick to think about it.

The rain had let up and our clothes were starting to dry as we crossed the plaza, heading back the way we came. As we stopped on the edge of the sidewalk, in the midst of a group of other pedestrians, to wait for a break in traffic, Bella turned to me.

"Hey," she said casually, "you want to get some lunch, or something?"

They were the same exact words I had used almost a year and a half ago, the first and last time I ever asked a girl out on a date. Back then, I could barely speak as I forced the words out; I vividly remembered the feeling of my blood pounding in my veins, my heartbeat thundering in my ears, my face flushing. But hearing Bella say the words now, my stomach lurched at the memory.

"Uh...I don't know," I blurted out, hoping to buy time. I wanted to say no - but then I remembered that my parents were eating without me, so I would have to find food somewhere anyway. And she _had_ chased down that thief for me...the least I could do was buy her lunch.

"Is it really lunch time already?" I said, to cover for my hesitation.

Bella checked her watch. "It's eleven. A little early for lunch in Spain. But...we could kill a little time first. You want to?"

"Um - well - "

"I mean, you don't have to," she said, laughing nervously. "I just thought - I mean, La Rambla's right here - we could just go look at all the little booths or something. It might be fun."

She blushed and looked away, gnawing on her lip in a way that made me feel guilty. Jesus. I had despised the very sight of this girl since I had first spotted her hours ago, and now here I was, about to spend the first day of my fabulous European vacation with _her_, of all people. I couldn't get away from her.

With a sigh of resignation, I gave in to what seemed to be fate. "Oh...sure, why not?"

We walked down La Rambla, threading our way through the crowd as we went from booth to booth. To my surprise, Bella bypassed all the really touristy booths, decked out in postcards and Barcelona-themed magnets, and went for some of the more authentic ones. An artist had set up a booth for his original paintings and sketches, and he stood off to the side, working on his current piece; Bella watched him paint for a while. We passed street performers painted up to look like living, breathing statues, fixed in various poses - Bella took pictures of them on her phone and dropped a coin or two into their buckets every time. We stopped at almost all of the jewelry booths, where Bella stared at the array of colorful earrings and necklaces for what felt like hours, transfixed.

At one booth, she spent a good five minutes poring over a single bracelet worshipfully: a simple black cord with a wide ceramic bead in the middle, on which a moon and two stars were hand-painted. I couldn't see what was so special about it, but as I stood a few feet away, pretending to search for a gift for Mother, I watched her vacillate between buying and not buying the bracelet. There was nothing for me to do but hover around, waiting for her to move on to the next booth, and really, a guy can only feign interest in handmade jewlery for so long before his reputation is put in serious risk. As time passed, I was almost as frustrated as I was bored - here I was, in _Spain_, wasting my time with some random American girl when I should have been out absorbing the culture. God. The whole situation was just so stupid.

Finally, I got so sick of watching her worship that stupid bracelet that I did something rather impulsive.

"Do you want it?" I asked her, a little more harshly than I had intended.

She looked up at me with a sharp jerk of her head and a guilty look on her face, as if I had caught her doing something wrong. "Oh...well, yeah, it's cool, but I don't need it," she said, her cheeks reddening. I looked at the little hand-written tag on the bracelet: it was only eight Euros, roughly the equivalent of ten or eleven American dollars.

"It's only eight Euros," I said. "Why don't you just get it?"

"Well... I really need to save my money," she said, avoiding my gaze in hideous embarrassment.

Jesus.

"I'll get it for you," I said. The sooner I got out of there the better, no matter how much I had to pay.

She fixed me with a withering glare. "I'm not a charity case."

Oh, God. She was one of _those_ girls.

"No, I know, I know, I just... I mean, you helped me with the thief, and then the police station, and all that... It's the least I could do."

Apparently that was the right thing to say, because her posture relaxed and the glare melted away to be replaced by a soft look of gratitude.

_Phew. Nice save, Cullen._

"Well..." she murmured, suddenly shy, "if you really want to..."

So I bought her the bracelet. The woman at the booth took my money and slipped the bracelet into a tiny paper bag. She winked at Bella as she handed her the bag.

"You nice to boyfriend now, eh?" she said with a knowing smile.

"Oh, no," said Bella, so quickly that I was actually a little offended. "He's not my boyfriend."

"Oh, okay," said the woman. And then she laughed as if Bella had just told the funniest joke she had ever heard.

We turned and walked away from the woman and her booth, both of us trapped in an embarrassed silence. I was racking my brain for something to say to ease the tension (as always) when Bella stopped in her tracks and turned to me.

"Hey, are you getting hungry?" she asked. She paused to check her watch. "It's almost noon now."

"Uh, yeah. Actually, I am." I guess chasing down criminals in a foreign country really burns up some calories. "We can eat now, if you want to." Then, still caught on my generosity streak, I added, "You pick the place."

"Really?" She flashed me a brilliant, thoroughly American smile - the kind of smile you see in ads for lipstick and toothpaste. "Sweet!"

Then, _boom!_ - instant regret.

God. I couldn't believe I was doing this. I was in _Barcelona_, and having lunch with some redneck in a Fudruckers T-shirt. And I had told _her_ to pick the place. She would probably make me take her to McDonalds or something.

_Oh, don't be a pansy, Cullen_, I said to myself. _It will only take an hour or so. It's just one lunch, and then you're through with her forever and you can have your European vacation, just the way you imagined it._

With a sigh, I resigned myself to the task ahead and followed Bella down La Rambla as we retraced our steps, doubling back the way we had come.

**Footnotes:**

**1. Euro (sign: €; code: EUR): the official currency of the Eurozone: 16 of the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU), including Spain, France, and Italy.**

**(Definitions from the always reliable Wikipedia.)****  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Chapter Three**

To my surprise, the restaurant that Bella chose, seemingly at random, turned out to be chic and ultra-modern inside. Everything was in white and a tall platform took up half the room near the back, where ten or twelve small tables were arranged neatly. A waiter handed us each a menu and pointed to an empty table for two on the platform, in the very back corner.

We sat down at the table and I examined the menu. It was in six different languages.

"Oh, we _have_ to get the _paella_," gushed Bella excitedly. "Do you like seafood?"

"Um - it's okay..."

"Well, I love seafood, but if you don't like it, we can just get the meat _paella_. It's the same as the traditional _paella_, just instead of the shrimp and mussels and everything, it's, you know, beef and chicken and..."

Just then, a party of six or seven people sat down at the long table next to ours, all of them talking loudly in what sounded like Dutch. Behind Bella, a woman in a burqa was having an intense conversation with her husband while their children babbled happily in some fluid Middle Eastern language. All around us, waiters bustled here and there, carrying steaming plates of food and bottles of wine and yelling at each other in Spanish.

Bella leaned towards me across the small table, peering at me over the top of her menu. She was smiling as she said very seriously, in a low whisper, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."

Luckily, our waiter chose that exact moment to appear, so I didn't have to pretend to understand what I assumed was some kind of old folk saying from backwoods Kentucky. God. The waiter looked back and forth between us expectantly, waiting for one of us to order.

"So do you just want to get the traditional _paella_ then, Edward?" said Bella. "Is that okay?"

I shrugged. "Sure."

"Oooh, and we should get the _tapas_ too!" she added, her eyes lighting up as she noticed some item on the menu.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

"You know, _tapas_. They're traditional Spanish appetizers."

"Well, what are they?"

"They change daily. They could be anything."

_Oh, that sounds like a great idea_, I thought sarcastically to myself. I sighed and handed the waiter my menu. "Sure, fine."

"And..." She bit her lip, grinning mischievously as her cheeks flushed pink. "Do you like sangria?"

"Sure."

So Bella ordered the _tapas_, the traditional _paella_, and sangria for the two of us to share. The waiter took our menus and hurried away to wait on the Dutch table. A few minutes later, he returned with two empty wine glasses and a pitcher full of deep purple sangria, with picturesque orange and lemon slices floating around the top. It looked like a picture out of a magazine - maybe _People_'s "hot summer recipes," or something.

"Can you believe that?" said Bella, pouring herself a full glass of sangria. "He didn't even check our I.D.s! And I'm actually _legal_ over here."

"I don't think they care about the underage drinking thing as much as we do."

"That's true."

"That's why binge drinking is considered _cool_ back home," I said, fingering the rim of my empty glass absently as I remembered all my classmates back in New York. "Because it's, like, _forbidden_. It's wrong, so it's cool. Over here, everyone drinks, so it's not such a big deal. Kids don't go out and get wasted every weekend like they do back in America."

I looked up and she was watching me with the strangest look on her face - a cross between curiosity and a vague sort of admiration. She arched one eyebrow at me delicately. "I take it you're not a big drinker yourself?"

I averted my eyes. "No," I muttered. "Not really."

But just to prove that I was capable of drinking (in moderation, of course) when I felt like it, I picked up the pitcher of sangria and poured myself a glass. Under the scrutiny of her gaze, I took a sip, fighting off a grimace at the tartness of the wine; still, the sangria was much sweeter than the fine wines my parents drank, as it was only half wine and half sugary fruit juice.

When it came to alcohol, I was so inexperienced that it was almost embarrassing. Sometimes I would have a glass of wine with dinner at my parents' fancy dinner parties, and I'd had a beer or two with my dad while hanging out at the summer house on the weekends, but I had only actually been drunk once in my whole life. It was the night of junior prom, at an after-party at some rich kid's apartment, where my date had dragged me along after prom.

My prom date was Tanya Denali, a pretty but troubled girl who liked to pop pills and dyed her hair so many different colors so often that no one knew her natural color anymore by the time she was fourteen. Like everyone else at our school, she was filthy rich, but you'd never guess by the grungy clothes she wore and the look of her nails, chewed down to the quick and covered in multiple layers of chipped nail polish in all different colors, and the sallow, unhealthy tone of her complexion. Tanya didn't like me at all - no one at that particular school did, except for my English teacher - but I think she felt sort of sorry for me, and though she despised prom on basic principle alone, I asked her to prom and she decided to go, just to give her parents something to be pleased about for once.

I didn't like her either, but I was fascinated by her, the way she didn't give a fuck about anyone or anything - including her daddy's reputation as a powerful CEO of some company I had never heard of - and made no apologies for who she was. She was pissed off at the world, and yet life was one big joke to her. She was a walking contradiction. She was herself.

I admired her for that.

On prom night, I picked her up in a cab at her place (I didn't want Mother and Father, who were proud of me for being social for once, to see her, the ratty dress she had bought at Goodwill for three dollars as a sort of joke, paired with her usual dirty Converse) and we went to dinner with some of her friends at a traditional Irish pub. Everyone else had a few drinks, but I stayed sober. We arrived at prom late, and I was glad: the three hours I spent there were torture. Tanya spent most of the night ignoring me, dancing with her friends while I looked on from the fringes of the room, but when it was time to leave, she turned sweet, convincing me to come along to a party at her friend's house with her.

We left prom early and took a cab to a huge apartment on Park Avenue. The place was already packed, completely trashed by half of the senior class and most of the juniors, too - apparently, a bunch of kids had skipped prom altogether and come here instead. It was hot and loud, cramped with body heat and sweat and belligerent teenagers on drugs. As we moved from room to room, Tanya leading the way, holding my hand and pulling me along behind her, we passed kids smoking all different kinds of shit, kids chugging beer and vodka and God knows what else, kids making out and sometimes taking things a little farther than that, and girls walking around practically naked, their shimmery prom dresses bundled up in their arms.

Tanya and I ended up in the kitchen, alone except for a few kids huddled around a bong at the kitchen table - but they were oblivious to us. I turned to her and said, "I think I'm gonna go home now."

"No, no," said Tanya. She smiled up at me and touched my face in a way I'm sure I'll never forget. "Stay."

Then we were kissing, somehow, her small and frail druggie body pinned between me and the counter. It was my first kiss, and it wasn't what I had expected at all: it was slimy and forceful and gritty, and I felt her teeth sink into my bottom lip. I was still wearing my tux and she pushed off the jacket, tossing it into the floor, and then she started tearing at my bow tie.

"Hey, be careful with that. It's a rental."

"I don't give a shit," said Tanya. She got the bowtie off and threw it into the floor as well. Then she cupped my face in both of her little white hands, which were speckled here and there with stray burn marks. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "you would be so hot if you just lost the glasses."

I swallowed hard, trying not to blush and failing. "How am I supposed to see without my glasses?"

She raised her eyebrows at me. "Contacts?"

"I have very sensitive eyes. My optometrist says I may develop dry eye syndrome in the future if I don't take care of them," I explained. "Contacts aren't really a feasible option - "

"Just shut up and kiss me again."

I did as I was told, and she wasted no time in pulling my glasses off - but at least she placed these on the counter behind her rather than throwing them in the floor like all the other items she had removed from my person. She ran her fingers through my hair, down the back of my neck to my shoulders, and over my chest. She pulled away from my mouth long enough to whisper huskily, "You're so...so..."

"What?"

"Scrawny. But I like it," she added quickly at my hurt expression. "I like my guys gangly."

Then we were kissing again, and she steered us through the apartment, to a dark and emtpy room. She flipped on the light switch and it was a bedroom, furnished sparsely, like a stylish modern hotel room. She closed the door, pushed me down on the bed, and pulled her little black slip of a prom dress off over her head.

She was wearing a lacy black thong, but no bra. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman's breasts (well...in person, at least), and though they were small and white - not as impressive as the breasts of my dreams, for sure - I couldn't help but gape at them at first.

"Like what you see?" breathed Tanya, and then she was in my lap, kissing me again. She rolled us over onto the bed, pulling my hair again and again as I palmed her breasts frantically, sure that someone would burst in and interrupt or she would come to her senses and push me away, suddenly repulsed, at any second.

But she didn't. She kept kissing me and running her hands through my hair, and then the hands moved down my chest and lower still. And then she was unbuttoning my shirt, and then my pants, and then she was unzipping my fly, and then her hand was _inside_ -

"_Stop, stop, STOP_!"

I was aware of myself and of Tanya only as a sort of outsider - as if merely observing unfortunate characters in a bad after-school special. I could hear music playing somewhere in the apartment, outside the stillness of this stranger's bedroom, a pulsing syncopated beat and some pop singer moaning the same dirty words over and over again. I could hear my heart beating and my lungs filling with air, I could hear the rustle of fabric as Tanya rolled onto her side to stare at me. But all the while I felt like I was somewhere else, somewhere very far away.

"What?" said Tanya. "What's wrong?"

I sat up and moved away from her, scooting backwards across the bed like a scared little boy. I _was_ a scared little boy. "Nothing's wrong. I just... I don't know if we should do this."

"We should, Edward. Trust me. You won't regret it."

She lunged for the fly of my pants again, but I was quicker than her, rolling over the edge of my bed and onto my feet before she could catch me. "No, I think I would," I said as I zipped up my pants and buttoned my shirt. "I'm sorry. I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Oh, Edward." She smiled fondly at me like I was a cute but naive little child. She got up off of the bed, too, and walked over to the nightstand, where a few blunts were already made up, lying still and ready on the table. I hadn't noticed them before. She lit one and took a drag of it. "Here," she said, holding it out to me. "This will make you feel better."

I shook my head at her. "No, thanks."

"Why not? You scared?" The amusement left her face and her expression turned sour as I refused the blunt once again. "Come on, Edward, it's just a little weed. No big deal."

"I said, no thanks."

"Just one drag. You'll feel so much better - "

"I don't want it."

"Jesus, Edward," snapped Tanya, her voice suddenly full of sharp edges, like shards of broken glass, "don't you know how to have a good time? Have you ever actually had _fun_? Do you even know what fun _is_?"

Later - weeks, months, years later - I heard her voice in my dreams sometimes. Sometimes when I had a bad day and I felt particularly miserable, I would come home and sit alone in the silence and remember the way her words had sounded then, harsh and nasally and just a little slurred: _Jesus, Edward, don't you know how to have a good time? Don't you know? Don't you?_

_No, I don't_, my mind would reply to her sometimes. _I don't know how._

But that night, I didn't say anything to her. I just turned and walked out of the room, leaving her standing there with her lit blunt, still wearing only a black thong and her dirty Converse. I went back to the kitchen to retrieve my jacket and my bowtie and my glasses, and I was about to leave - but then I decided to have a beer first.

And then I had another. And another. And another. I knew I didn't belong there, but the more I drank, the more I thought maybe I did, and the longer I stayed, the more I drank. And then someone had some vodka, somebody dared me to a drinking game, someone else handed me a shot of something... And I don't remember what happened after that.

I just remember waking up the next morning with the worst headache I have ever had, lying in a pool of my own vomit in the bathroom floor. I wandered through the apartment in search of a way out, stepping over passed out and sleeping people, lying still and gray like dead bodies in the floor, as I went. When I finally reached the foyer, there were two girls and a guy sitting in the floor, passing a bowl around.

"Hey," said one girl, squinting at me through the cloud of hazy smoke escaping from her mouth, "aren't you that weird guy from my organic chem class?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's me."

And then I walked out of the apartment and hailed a cab, only to find that all my cash was missing. So then I walked all the way home in my stupid tux, shielding my eyes with my hand from the bright sunshine as I nursed what had to be the worst hangover known to man.

That was the first and last time I had ever gotten drunk, and the first and last time I had ever kissed a girl. Neither experience had ended well. For one night, I had come so close to being normal, to fitting in, to feeling like I actually belonged somewhere...and then when the smoke and the alcohol had cleared, I woke up in the morning and no one had anything to say to me except, "_Hey, aren't you that weird guy from my organic chem class_?"

That was the night I gave up on my school. I transferred to a new school for my senior year, and that one wasn't any better. But at least this time I had initiated the move myself, rather than letting Mother talk me into it; at least I was stepping away from the people and places I hated on my own.

I turned my back on the school first - then New York, then the U.S., then all of North America. Ultimately, that party was the catalyst that prompted me to leave the country and move to Europe.

And now, a year later, I was here in Barcelona, sitting in a restaurant with an American girl who was probably judging me for my disapproval of alcohol even as I remembered the night that had turned me against drinking once and for all. What did Bella think of me? Did she think I was a loser, like everyone else did, because I didn't drink? Did _she_ drink?

_Of course she drinks_, I thought. _She ordered sangria, didn't she? At lunchtime! And then she said, "I'm actually legal here," like she's used to being _illegal.

Obviously, she drank. I should have guessed that right from the start. After all, she seemed pretty trashy, and trashy people do love their alcohol.

_I bet she gets wasted every weekend, just like I said earlier. That's why she's being so quiet - she's embarrassed. I bet she has one-night stands all the time. She probably lost her virginity when she was twelve, like Tanya did. She seems all nice and sweet, but I bet she's secretly a slut. It's always the ones you least suspect..._

She certainly looked innocent enough on the surface. Now, she was leaning back in her seat, her legs crossed with one foot bobbing, sipping her drink absently as she watched all the other people in the restaurant. Relaxed in this pose, her face looked softer - impossibly soft, even. Little tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from her ponytail and fell around her face. She was wearing quite a lot of make-up (or she had been, at least): a pale bluish eyeshadow paired with solid black eyeliner and black mascara, all of which had smeared and run together in the rain, giving her eyes a dark, smoky look. When she turned and looked at me then, her eyes were a lighter brown than I remembered - almost a sort of amber color.

"What?" She noticed me looking and, with the hand that wasn't cradling her wine glass, touched her face self-consciously. "Do I have racoon eyes?"

"No," I said instinctively, though of course she did. "Your eyes look fine."

She shook her head and put her glass down, picking up a spoon and examining her reflection in the back of it. She grimaced into the spoon and used her napkin to wipe away the excess make-up under her eyes. "I don't normally wear this much make-up," she said, "I just got bored on the plane, and...you know."

"You just flew in this morning?"

"Yeah." She put down the spoon and smiled at me. "We were on the same plane you guys were on. I just - I mean, I noticed you, when I was boarding the plane yesterday..." She trailed off, blushing.

She did that a lot, I noticed - the blushing thing.

"Oh. Really?" I started to add, "_I didn't notice you_," but caught myself at the last second. _Phew_. I was always blurting out rude stuff like that by accident.

She seemed to sense the unspoken words anyway, though. "Yeah, but, I mean, you probably didn't notice me. I just saw you on the way to my seat. We were in coach, so..."

Oh. Of course they were in coach.

I should have said something encouraging, made some joke, laughed it off, maybe told her the story about my own experience in coach years ago. That would have been the socially acceptable thing, the _charming_ thing, to do, but the words wouldn't come. They got caught on the tip of my tongue and I stuttered for a moment, and then all I said was, "Oh."

_God. What an arrogant douchebag thing to say. She must hate me._

She cleared her throat, picked up her glass, and looked away again. I searched my brain for something to say to fix it - anything! - but came up empty. I felt the familiar heartbeat ringing my ears, my hands balling themselves into sweaty fists at my sides, my thoughts racing as I stewed in my own humiliation. Once again, I was sitting here in awkward silence, knowing that I was funny and clever and likeable somehow (surely I was!), but not knowing how to prove it. I had no idea how to prove it.

It was high school all over again.

Just as I was spiraling downward into the lowest level of self-loathing, Bella broke the awful silence. "So what was your favorite place in Philly?" she said.

At first, I was so taken off guard that I didn't even comprehend the words she had said. "...Huh?" I said stupidly.

"In Philadelphia? You said you've been there. So what's your favorite place?"

"Oh. I don't know..." But of course I did know. I tried to sound casual, not like a total nerd, as I said, "The art museum, I guess."

"Really?" She arched one eyebrow at me again, and in that pose, she looked surprisingly clever and sophisticated. "That's funny. I had you pegged as more of a museum of natural history kind of guy."

"Actually, my mom's more into that stuff. She's into psychology, so, you know...anthropology sort of goes with it, I guess."

"Oh. Well, there's nothing wrong with that," said Bella. "Anthropology's pretty interesting, too."

"Yeah." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation with _her_ - the owner of a Fudruckers T-shirt and a pair of absurd ladybug earrings. It seemed like some kind of elaborate scheme to me. She couldn't just prance around Barcelona in hideous nylon shorts one second and then use the word _anthropology_ in comfortable conversation the next. It just wasn't natural. It had to be a trick.

I didn't know why she was pretending to be some kind of museum expert, but I was suddenly sure that she was. Maybe, for whatever crazy reason, she wanted to earn my respect, and this was the only way she could see to do it? Or maybe she wanted to one-up me, seem smarter and more cultured than I was? It was hard to say. At any rate, I decided to test her.

"So, what's _your_ favorite place in Philly?" I asked.

She flashed me a small, embarrassed smile. "I like the art museum as well."

Hm. Not very convincing. She could have simply copied my answer for lack of a better one, and even if she wasn't copying me, any idiot off of the street could have picked the art museum. Thanks to Rocky, it had become a part of cheap American pop culture.

"Yeah?" I said skeptically. And now to bring out the big guns: "What's your favorite piece?"

"My favorite piece?" she repeated, eyes going wide. "In the whole museum?"

"Yeah." I smirked. _I've got you now! You can't fool me that easily._

"Oh, jeez..." said Bella. "Hm. That's a tough one."

Just when I thought she was going to either take the easy way out ("I don't know, I just love them _all_ so much") or confess ("I just wanted you to _like _me!"), she took a long sip of her sangria, stared into space pensively for a moment, and then said with great purpose, "I think the Degas."

And, I swear to God, she even pronounced _Degas_ correctly!

"Oh," I said, struggling to overcome my surprise. So she knew Degas. So what? I knew Degas, too. Just to prove that she wasn't smarter or more cultured than me and I did, in fact, know exactly who Degas was, I said, "The dancers."

"No, no, not one of the dancers," said Bella. "It's the painting with the man and the woman, in the bedroom... What's it called?"

And then it hit me.

Oh, God.

I knew exactly which painting she was talking about. It was the same painting I had spent a full ten minutes staring at during my one trip to the art museum in Philly; the same painting that Mother had dubbed "boring" and spared no second glance, opting to spend the bulk of our visit there in the hideous modern art section instead; the same painting that had almost gotten me thrown out, because in my awe, I had moved so close that a security guard nearby told me in a threatening tone to "take a few steps back, sir."

All at once, I remembered the feeling of reverence, the deep emotions it had stirred up in me - emotions that none of Degas' dancers could have ever conjured. It was my favorite Degas. Maybe one of my favorite paintings, period.

"_Le Viol_," I breathed.

"Yes!" said Bella, pointing at me and beaming in triumph with an enthusiasm far too obscene to be used while discussing Degas, as if she had just recalled the name of that one actor in _Saved by the Bell_ that she had been trying to remember all day and not the title of one of the greatest pieces of the impressionist period. "That's it. _Le Viol_. That's my favorite." Then she paused for a moment and bit her lip in thought. "But isn't it labeled as something else in the museum?"

"Well, _Intérieur_ is it's real name. _Le Viol_ is just a sort of nickname."

"Oh, yeah, that's right," she said, nodding. "But I like _Le Viol_ better - I mean, _The Rape _says so much more about the story behind the painting than just _Interior_."

I stared. "You speak French?"

"Not really." She flashed me a sheepish smile. "I took an art history class in high school."

Before I could start to feel to impressed (or even, God help me, _enamored_) by her at least basic knowledge of art, our waiter returned, carrying a long rectangular plate on which five tiny slices of bread, all with different toppings, were neatly arranged in a line. Bella poured herself a second glass of sangria and nodded to the plate in the center of the table.

"_Tapas_," she said.

And then I decided to forget about _Le Viol_ altogether, and focus on the present moment - an authentic meal in Spain - instead.

Bella cut all the tapas in two with the off-handed confidence of someone who has cooked for herself all her life, and we shared each one. With each new slice, she would say, "Drumroll, please," and insist that we both drum our hands against the table for a good five seconds before taking the first bite. Then we would take the bite, watching each other's strange expressions as we chewed and tasted. Then Bella would pause, stare right at me, and say very seriously, "What's the verdict?"

"It's good," I would say.

Bella would say, "I concur."

And then we would start all over again.

The tapas got more exotic as we went down the line: the first slice was just cheese; the second was a cold tomato sauce; the fourth looked like some kind of seafood paste - I was absolutely certain that it would be disgusting, but it was actually very good. All of them were very good. And as silly and childish as the drumrolling and the announcing of verdicts seemed, it enhanced the experience somehow. It was certainly more fun than having lunch with my parents would have been.

As we worked our way through the tapas, I finished off my glass of sangria. "Here," said Bella, who was already on her third glass, "have another glass."

I shook my head. "I don't know if I should..."

"You should. They brought us a whole pitcher. We might as well drink the whole thing, right? Get our money's worth?"

I knew Mother wouldn't want me to even have one glass of sangria, much less two (especially at _lunchtime_), but Bella had a point - and Mother was always saying that Americans were too wasteful, right? Bella's logic was fullproof. I had no choice; the only ethical thing to do would be to drink another glass.

So I poured myself another glass and Bella topped off her third glass with what was left in the pitcher. I didn't like fruit very much, so she had all the orange and lemon slices crammed into her glass, and while we waited for the paella, she fished them out one by one, eating the fruit and setting aside the peel. She was sucking on a lemon slice when the waiter brought the main course. He laughed and said something to her in Spanish.

"Excuse me?" said Bella, pulling the lemon out of her mouth to speak.

"It is sour, no?" said the waiter in English.

"Oh yes," said Bella. "It's fantastic."

He shook his head and walked away, laughing.

The _paella_ was...not what I had expected. It was essentially shrimp and mussels, still in tact, arranged artfully on a bed of Spanish rice in its own special sort of skillet thing. A _sarten_, Bella said it was called. At least, that's what it sounded like she said; our waiter brought us another pitcher of sangria and I was on my fourth glass when she began to explain the process of cooking _paella_ to me.

"I tried making a sort of American variation myself," she was saying, "but it's just not the same. I mean, it's not the same because we can't buy fresh shrimp and shit like that back in Kentucky. It's all frozen shit, and it ain't no good."

She was on her sixth glass and a little drunk at that point, but you couldn't tell except for the amount of concentration she had to put into dissecting her shrimp and the fact that she actually said "ain't no good" in all seriousness. She wasn't slurring her speech at all though, and her cheeks were only slightly flushed (which I was beginning to think was normal for her anyway).

"You know what else is so cool about Philly?" she said, out of the blue, once she had finished explaining her own personal paella recipe to me. "The food there is so good."

"I guess."

"I mean, you can't beat a good Philly cheese steak."

"I never had one."

Bella stared at me, as if appalled. "You're kidding! You went to Philly but never had a Philly cheese steak?"

"Nope." I shrugged and finished off my glass of sangria in one go.

"Oh my gosh! Why not? You totally missed out!"

"Well..." My voice sounded hoarse and strange, foreign, as if it was coming from someone else's throat and not my own. "I was experimenting with veganism at the time..."

Just beyond the haze of alcohol, I sensed some sort of vague memory... And then I remembered: back in high school, the other kids used to tease me about the vegan thing all the time, mercilessly. It ocurred to me that Bella might tease me for this too, or at least laugh at me, but it was too late to take it back now.

To my surprise, she said, "Oh, okay. That's cool. I used to be a vegetarian."

"Really?" _I didn't know they had those in Kentucky_, I almost said, but caught myself at the last second.

"Oh yeah. It was my mom's idea, really. She used to be a total hippie. I mean, she still is, but she's calmed down a lot since she met Phil." She paused, staring into space for a moment, lost in thought. Then, coming back to reality, she went on, "But yeah, I didn't eat any meat at all for like three years. Then Renee became a nurse and figured out it wasn't very healthy, because you don't get as much protein and stuff, so now we just eat organic meat, with no hormones or anything. Free range chicken and shit like that. Sometimes I'll break down and get a cheeseburger from Sonic or something though." She tried to wink, but in her drunken state, it looked more like a facial tick than anything.

"That sounds so good right now." I couldn't even remember the last time I had had a _real_ cheeseburger - not some kind of gourmet garden-burger bullshit. Cheeseburgers and all other fatty, greasy foods were strictly prohibited in my house. I was convinced that the only person on the planet more obsessed with eating healthy than Mother was Father.

"Yeah." Bella looked down at the paella. She bit her lip in mild distaste at the sight of the pried-open mussels and the shrimp with their heads, legs, and tails still attached, their little black eyes gleaming sadly, as if they had just crawled up onto the rice and died just seconds ago. "The paella's a little gruesome, isn't it?"

"Just a bit. I don't really like to look into the eyes of my meal."

"Maybe we should say a prayer, thank them for giving up their lives so we could have food from their bodies. You know, like the Indians used to," she suggested.

"Okay, I'm a little drunk, I'll admit," I said, "but I'm definitely not _that_ drunk. Not yet, anyway."

She laughed and we went back to eating and drinking in silence. The more I drank, the more effort it seemed to take to express my thoughts in complete sentences and not to spill sangria and paella all over myself. By my sixth glass, Bella was fishing the orange and lemon slices out of her drink again, laughing at nothing in particular as she ate them one by one, and I couldn't stop watching the pink flesh of her lips moving around the delicate fruit. By my seventh, I realized that the Dutch people at the table next to ours, who were doing their own share of drinking, were staring at us. I was too far gone to care, though.

Tired of dissecting shrimp, I picked a mussel out of the platter of food between us. "How are you supposed to eat this?" I asked.

"You just scrape it out," said Bella.

"Like this?"

"Yeah. Just like that. Now eat it."

I used my fork to pluck the meat out of the shell, and put the whole thing in my mouth and chewed without thinking. Bella cracked up immediately.

"What?"

"You just ate it's pooper!" she giggled.

I threw my fork down in horror, but sadly, I had already swallowed the dreaded "pooper." "You said that was how I was supposed to eat it!" I said accusingly.

"That _is_ how you're supposed to eat it. You're supposed to eat the pooper."

"Jesus."

"It's a great source of fiber," said Bella through a mouthful of food, and then she started laughing so hard that she had to cover her mouth with her napkin so that she wouldn't spit partially chewed shrimp everywhere.

"You're drunk," I said.

"Just a little. Here." She grabbed my wine glass shakily, sloshing sangria everywhere, and filled it to the brim with more sangria. "You should be, too."

After that, I'm not so sure what happened. The shrimp seemed to be staring coldly at me, their rows of tiny legs trembling in a cruel mockery of life, and the grains of rice seemed to be moving on my plate, writhing around like stunted worms. The whole room moved around me like a box taped to my head, a slo-mo video with a lag time. I was moving too fast, my head swayed and ached and I felt sick. I think I paid, somehow, and left a tip, even though Bella said they don't leave tips in Europe, they add gratuity onto the bill. I was too drunk to care. I remember seeing the two empty pitchers on the table beside each other as we left, Bella eating the last orange slice and leaving its peel on her dirty plate.

We found our way back to the hotel, I don't know how. That was when I realized I didn't have a room key. I thought maybe Mother had thought to leave one at the front desk for me, but the lady at the desk said she didn't have a key for me, she was sorry. She wanted to know how it went at the police station. I couldn't even remember; it felt like a thousand years ago.

I said, would she mind if I slept on a couch in the lobby? because suddenly I was so tired, too tired to stay awake any longer. But then Bella said, no, no, no, don't be silly, you can just stay in my room. My parents are out sightseeing for the day, they won't mind.

And then I was I laying down on the bed in her room, knowing even as I did that I would regret it later - but the bed was so soft and the blanket that Bella spread over me was so warm and comforting that I gave in. I closed my eyes and was almost asleep when I felt the mattress sink down next to me.

And then Bella's voice, her earnest American voice: "Edward, are you still awake?"

"Yes," I mumbled.

"What does this mean?"

I opened my eyes. She was kneeling on the floor next to my bed, her arms folded over one another on the edge of the mattress as she stared at me intently. She held out a small piece of what appeared to be tissue paper.

I took it from her and realized it was the little paper bag the woman from La Rambla had put Bella's bracelet in. I wasn't sure what Bella meant at first, but when I flipped the bag over, there was writing on the other side. In delicate cursive, it read, "_Cualquiera que sea deseos de tu corazón..."_

"What does it mean?" she asked again.

"It means..." My mind struggled to put the words together through the sweet haze of sangria. "It means, '_Whatever your heart desires_.'"

"Oh," she said. "That's pretty."

She didn't take it back. My eyes fell closed again, seemingly of their own accord, and I heard the groaning of mattress springs as Bella climbed onto the other bed, the rustling of fabric as she pulled a blanket over herself. Gradually, I became aware that the little paper bag was still in my hand, so I balled it up and shoved it in my pocket. It seemed like the only thing to do with it at the time.

"Goodnight, Edward," murmured Bella from the next bed over, though it was the middle of the afternoon.

At least, I think that's what she said, but I could have imagined it. The whole day felt like a dream to me, and for a moment I thought that maybe if I went to sleep here, in a hotel room in Barcelona with an American girl I had just met, maybe I would wake up at our apartment back in New York, and I would be the only one in the house, as always, and I would lie there in bed listening to the lonely sounds of the coffee pot gurgling in the kitchen, wondering what all the cool kids who actually lived their lives were doing on a hot Sunday morning like this. I would wake up and none of it would be real anymore.

I heard Bella begin to snore softly, and I silently complimented my brain on it's attention to detail. Then all the sounds around me seemed to blur and I couldn't stay awake much longer. I fell into a deep and peaceful sleep, and the only dream I had was of tie-dye and soft brown eyes.

**Footnotes:**

**1. tapas: traditional Spanish appetizers; can be cold or warm; popular in bars and restaurants across Spain.**

**2. paella: a Valencian rice dish, usually made with seafood, meat, or vegetables.**

**3. "Intérieur (Le Viol)" by Edgar Degas: 1868-69, 32x45 in, oil on canvas; Philadelphia Museum of Art. [Information from philamuseum (dot) org.]**

**Check out my profile for a link to a digital image of the Degas painting. I'll be posting more links related to the story there in the future as well.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Chapter Four**

"Edward. Edward. Get up."

My eyes fluttered open and there was Mother, sitting on the edge of the bed, glaring down at me. The light coming through the window behind her lit up her hair so that it glowed a soft auburn, and I noticed how mussed it was. She was still wearing the same clothes as earlier too, and her eyes looked tired, her make-up smudged.

"Edward," she said, her voice shaking the way it always did when she was furious, "what are you doing?"

It was only then that I realized I had no idea where I was. I glanced around the room: there was a single window behind Mother, with a desk underneath; a small television set was mounted from the ceiling in the corner of the room; an open door on the opposite wall revealed a darkened bathroom; I was lying on one of a set of two twin beds - a girl was lying in the other bed, her face turned away from me with a mass of dark hair splayed out on her pillow, a leopard-print fleece blanket draped over her small form.

Oh. Bella.

The day came back to me in a rush. I tried to sit up in bed, but moved too fast, and my head spun. I was still hideously dizzy and I had a pounding headache. I looked down at myself: I was still fully clothed, shoes and all, and I was lying under a big blue blanket with the American flag on it. I screamed in horror and ripped the blanket off, tossing it into the floor.

"Edward," said Mother, getting to her feet so she could stand over me and emasculate me properly, "this is completely inappropriate."

"Mother - I just - I mean, I - " I glanced over at Bella for help, but she slept on.

"What were you thinking?" Mother raged at me. Father was standing in the doorway behind her, his arms crossed with a disapproving look on his face. Over his shoulder, I saw Bella's parents waiting out in the hall, Renee giggling and Phil smirking in his leering, American way. "We leave you two alone for a few hours, and when we come back you've - you've - "

"Oh, Esme," interrupted Renee, "I'm sure he didn't mean any harm..."

Then, mercifully, I remembered why I had slept in her room instead of my own: I had an excuse. "Mother!" I snapped. "You didn't leave me a room key. I had nowhere else to go."

The anger in Mother's face calmed and subsided to a quiet indignance at the suggestion that this was her fault. "You could have waited downstairs in the lobby," she said.

"Well, I was tired. I wanted to lay down. And Bella said it was okay..."

As if to corroborate my story, Bella let out a particularly loud snore at that precise moment. Mother glanced over at Bella's sleeping form, her upper lip curling in disgust, as if eyeing a dog turd she was going to have to clean up later. Then she turned her stony gaze back on me. She pointed to the door, snapping her fingers, like I was the disobedient pet who had made the mess. "Out, Edward. Now."

With what little dignity I had left, I held my head high as I walked through a gauntlet of sorts, past Mother, Father, and the Dwyers (who seemed more amused than disapproving), and down the narrow hotel corridor.

"Honestly, Edward," said Mother once the Dwyers were safely in their room and out of earshot, "I don't know what you were thinking. It's bad enough that you slept in a young girl's room, without anyone's permission, _alone_ - "

"Mother, nothing happened."

She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "...But you had to share a room with _her_? Darling, we're in Europe, for goodness' sake, surely you could find better company than _that_." As we reached what I assumed was our room, she dug the room key out of her pocket and leaned in close to me. "I don't want you associating with those people, alright, dear?" she said in a low voice.

"Don't worry, I won't. I just felt bad because she helped me get you backpack back and then she went to the police station with me and everything...so then I took her out to lunch and..." I hesistated, then made a split-second decision not to tell her about the sangria, and went on. "You guys were still gone when we came back and we were really tired, so we took a nap in her room. That was it."

"Well," said Mother, "I suppose it was nice of you to treat her to lunch. Don't you think so, Carlisle?"

Father, who had remained silent ever since my parents had first discovered me in Bella's room, looked up with a start now, as if surprised to be acknowledged. "Yes," he said, although, judging by the bewildered look on his face, I doubt he was even aware of what we were talking about. "I think so."

"Alright then, that's settled. You did a nice thing for her, but lets not take it any further. I don't want her rubbing off on you." She patted my cheek fondly, pulled me closer in order to kiss me on the forehead, and then turned and opened the door to our room.

I tried to follow her and Father into the room, but she stopped me.

"Oh, no, no, dear, this is Mother and Father's room," said Mother. "Your room is across the hall. Here." She handed me a little plastic room key. "We've already brought your things up. They're in your room."

"Um... Okay."

"Now, Mother and Father are going to catch up on their rest a bit, so don't bother them, alright?" Ugh. I hated when she referred to herself in the third person, like I was two years old. "So you run along. Do what you like, but stay in your room, alright? We've learned our lesson about criminals in foreign countries today, haven't we?"

She flashed me her cheesy Mom smile and disappeared inside her room, leaving me standing there in the hallway all alone. Then there was nothing else to do but retire to my room.

My room was bigger than Bella's, with one double bed instead of two twins. There was no TV mounted from the ceiling, but a wide flat-screen TV on a table against the far wall instead. The bathroom was clean and spacious, with a bidet and double his-and-hers sinks. Clearly, the room was made for two, and it made me feel that much more alone.

My suitcase and my backpack were lying in the corner of the room, in front of the closet. So my parents had taken all our bags upstairs before they went looking for me; they were more concerned with keeping our luggage safe than my whereabouts in a foreign country. Then again, where had they expected to find me? They hadn't given me a key to my room before, so they had to know I couldn't be there. Maybe they thought I was still at the police station, filing some sort of official paperwork. Maybe they hadn't yet realized that Spain is not like the U.S., and the police here aren't too keen on filing paperwork that they know will do no good.

I was sure Mother would hate the idea, call them _backwards_ and all sorts of other adjectives, but truthfully, I preferred the calm, accepting nature of European society. Americans pretended to be on top of everything and always in control, but that was exactly what it was: just pretending. There was so much more bullshit in America, in every facet of our society.

Just thinking about it made my head hurt, and I went and sat on the edge of my bed. I felt dizzy, and it was hard to walk straight; I had only been asleep in Bella's room for about four hours, and I was still a little bit drunk from earlier. The sangria had been such a terrible, terrible idea. Why had I ever let Bella talk me into day drinking?

_Never again_, I swore to myself, rubbing my temples as if to massage away my pounding headache. I really wanted some aspirin, but I knew Mother had it. I would have to go across the hall and talk to her a bit to get some, and I wasn't sure I could take a conversation with her right now, to be honest.

So I kicked off my shoes and took off my nice khakis, folding them over the back of the chair in the corner of my room. I took off my button-up pink shirt, too, changing into a plain T-shirt and pajama bottoms. At home, I slept in my boxers, but I wanted to cover up as much as possible if I was going to be sleeping in a hotel bed in a foreign country. You never know what could be hiding under those covers.

Mother had said to sleep on top of the comfortor and cover yourself with your own blanket, but she had all the blankets in her room and, again, I wasn't about to go talk to her right now, when I was straddling intoxication and a hangover, with a hefty side of sleep-deprivation.

I pulled back the comfortor and the sheets on my bed, and leaned in close to inspect the sheets. They looked clean enough to me. I climbed into bed, curled up under the covers, and turned off the light. I glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand: _19:05_. Just after seven o'clock, then.

I closed my eyes and went to sleep, and this time I didn't dream.

**-x-x-x-**

By eight-thirty the next morning, I was in a cab again, curled up against the car door with my eyes closed in hopes of warding off the second-worst hangover I had ever had. We had stopped for breakfast at a little deli near the hotel, and I downed two small cups of espresso, even though Mother warned me that European coffee is stronger than our diluted American coffee. I ate half of some sort of pastry too, just so Mother would stop nagging me about eating something, and as the cab sped through Barcelona traffic, I was starting to worry about seeing the pastry again.

I felt like hell, and Mother and Father could tell. I tried to play it off as jet-lag, and Mother seemed to buy it, but I think Father knew something was up. I had slept a full twelve hours, for Christ's sake - not including the extra four hours I had spent passed out in Bella's room while my parents were out gallivanting around Barcelona. There was no reason for me to feel sleep-deprived; there was no reason for me to feel tired at all.

And I wasn't tired. I was as rested as I've ever been. I was pretty hungover from the day before, though. I had gotten more drunk than I had intended to. Now, sitting in a cab on the way to Park Guell, I couldn't even remember the day before as a series of chronological events: I could only remember it in bits and pieces, all of them cut up and rearranged until I wasn't sure what had happened when, or what parts were real and what parts my imagination had cooked up. Some parts I couldn't remember at all; others hovered in my periphery, never close enough to grasp and understand, taunting me.

I remembered chasing Bella down La Rambla, in hot pursuit of the backpack thief. I remembered talking to the saggy, tan woman at the police station. I remembered buying the bracelet for Bella in La Rambla. All of that was pretty clear. It was during lunch - when the waiter brought our sangria, in fact - that the memories began to get all jumbled up and hazy.

Desperately, I grasped at them one by one, the memories coming back to me in short bursts of silent images: Shrimp. We ate shrimp...and mussels. And the sangria, of course. And there were...what were they called...? ..._Tapas_? Yes, tapas. Bella, wiping at her eyes... Bella, sucking on an orange slice... Bella, fidgeting with her hair and blushing... Bella, staring into the back of a spoon...

Slowly, I recalled the sound of her voice:

_I don't normally wear this much make-up..._

_It's the painting with the man and the woman, in the bedroom..._

_You probably didn't notice me... We were in coach, so..._

_We might as well drink the whole thing, right...? Get our money's worth...?_

God. It was all _her_ fault. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, I hoped she was hungover, too - hopefully she was too busy puking her guts out in her tiny hotel bathroom to do much else. Serves her right for getting me drunk in the middle of the day when I should have been out seeing the sights.

Leaning against the car door with my eyes closed wasn't working; I felt the first stirrings of motion sickness beneath the queasiness of the hangover, so I sat up and looked out the window as we drove through the heart of Barcelona. Most of the traffic consisted of other cabs and motorcycles and mopeds of all makes and models. Some of them were from companies that I didn't even know _made_ motorcycles, like BMW and Volvo. Their drivers weren't like the traditional American biker, either: they were women in skirts and men in suits on their way to work, their ties and scarves flapping in the wind.

"There are so many motorcycles here," said Mother, giving voice to my own thoughts.

"Yeah. I guess it's cheaper than a car...uses less gas. Gas is pretty expensive here." We passed a huge apartment building with a row of maybe thirty or forty motorcycles parked out front, all of them lined up right against each other, just like a regular bike rack back in New York. A woman in a dress and heels with her hair put up elegantly was walking out to one of the motorcycles, putting on her helmet carefully, so as not to ruin her updo. "They take up less space, too."

"Yep," said Father from the front seat of the cab. "From what I've seen so far, Barcelona might even be more cramped than New York."

"Oh, I don't know about that, dear," said Mother.

For once, I agreed with her. New York was pretty goddamn cramped. Suffocating, in fact.

The cab turned and started up a steep incline. The shops and houses lining the street were juxtaposed to the hill they were built on at such an odd angle that they looked almost cartoonish. We passed a few more motorcycles and a young girl on a bike, but otherwise, we were just about the only car on the road.

We finally reached the top of the hill, and then there it was: Park Guell.

Mother touched my shoulder and gasped at the sight of it. With its warped gingerbread-house buildings nestled amongst the lush Spanish greenery, their colorful mosaic tiles gleaming in the early morning sun, it was unmistakable. The cab driver let us out in front of the wrought-iron gates and we walked inside, craning our necks and staring all around us in awe.

Park Guell was designed by the famous architect Gaudi, who lived and worked in Barcelona. Gaudi's architecture could be found throughout the city, and was Barcelona's biggest claim to fame. We weren't boarding the ship until three o'clock that afternoon, and Mother insisted that we spend the chunk of time before that touring Gaudi's two most famous works, Park Guell and La Sagrada Familia.

Not that I minded. I had always loved art and architecture, and seeing Gaudi's work in person was a dream come true. Walking around Park Guell that day was like stepping into a textbook or a photograph in a magazine - so surreal. I could hardly believe that I was really there.

It was still pretty early, and we were the only ones in the park, except for a few Japanese tourists babbling excitedly in their own language. Mother and Father and I gave ourselves a tour of the place in silence, Mother taking millions of pictures with her digital camera, Father looking grave and analytical with his hands clasped behind his back. I stared at all the tiny pieces of tile making up the many mosaics in the park, wondering how long it took to fit them all together.

By the time we started heading up the stone stairs leading to the upper level of the park, more tourists were pouring in. We reached the wide open stretch of dirt and sand looking out over the city just as the peddlers began laying out their wares for passing tourists, spreading out little souvenirs and trinklets on colorful blankets on the ground. One man was selling miniature models of some of Gaudi's tiled statues, and I moved closer - but then Mother pulled me away.

"Oh, come now, dear, we don't have time for souvenirs," said Mother briskly. She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and dragged me over to the edge of the overlook to take my picture. "Carlisle, dear, get in the picture - yes, that's right - now smile, everyone!"

I forced a smile, held it, and waited for the flash to go off. Father and I relaxed our fake smiles, but didn't move, as we waited for the verdict from Mother.

"Lovely," she said, checking the picture and approving. "Now, Carlisle, you take one of me and Edward, and then Edward can take one of the two of us."

Once the photoshoot was over, the park was already getting crowded. I checked my watch: it was 9:30. Allowing time to see La Sagrada Familia, grab something for lunch, get all our things back together back at the hotel, and take a cab to the port, we didn't have much time left here.

We walked around the upper level of the park, admiring the detail in all the structures and avoiding the other obnoxious tourists. We spent most of our time on the less crowded side of the park. There wasn't as much to see over there, but it was quiet and empty, and the view of Barcelona, laid out before us beneath a thin layer of blue-gray fog, was gorgeous.

When we had finally seen all there was to see except for the gift shop ("Oh, Edward, darling, gift shops are just so..._American_," said Mother), we had an extra half hour before we had to leave. There was a small cafe on the very top level of the park, and we stopped there for coffee. Only one man was working there, and he spoke no English, so naturally, Mother and Father made me order for all of us.

My Spanish was nowhere near conversational, but I managed to get my meaning across, so we all sipped hot espesso underneath an umbrella, looking out over the city and the park below. At ten o'clock, it was already starting to get hot out, but the shade of the umbrella kept us cool.

For a while, we were the only ones up there. But then, just as we were beginning to relax, an American family of five - two annoying parents and three even more annoying children - sat down at a table a few feet away from us. The mother was complaining loudly about how hot it was and struggling to restrain the squirming toddler in her lap; the other two kids were tormenting a bird that had landed nearby, hoping for some scraps of food; the father was staring fixedly at his cell phone, ignoring all the commotion around him.

"Ugh," said Father, leaning back in his seat and subtly nodding his head towards the family. "Who does that remind you of?"

Mother laughed her horrible snorting laugh of derision - the one she normally saved for her psychology students when they asked a particularly stupid question in class. "Oh, my. The Dwyers. Lovely people, aren't they?"

"Yes. Well, I suppose we should just be thankful that they didn't follow us here today. They certainly seemed keen on stalking our every move yesterday."

"Weren't they, though? I thought poor Edward would never be rid of the girl - you know, the teenage one. She tried her best to get those dirty little hot pink claws into you, didn't she, dear?" said Mother, stroking my hair sympathetically.

I don't know why, but I felt suddenly defensive - maybe because Mother had sent me on a pointless mission to the police station yesterday, and Bella had at least volunteered to help, though the whole mess had nothing to do with her. I pulled away from Mother, shaking off her touch. "They were just trying to help," I mumbled.

"Yes, well, even so..." Mother took a sip of her coffee, her expression grim. "They're a bit pushy, aren't they? And terribly pedestrian, besides. Nice enough - but terribly pedestrian."

The next few hours passed quickly. We took a cab to La Sagrada Familia, which turned out to be much more crowded than Park Guell had been - so crowded, in fact, that the line to get in wrapped all the way down one side of the building, spanning the distance of half a block.

"Oh, dear," said Mother, biting her lip. "The website said it might be a little crowded during peak tourism times, but it never said - I mean, this is just _ridiculous_..."

We didn't have time to go inside, so we walked around the outside, taking pictures as we went. La Sagrada Familia was a cathedral that had been under construction for over a hundred years, but still was not finished; forever a work in progress, the cranes and scaffolds were almost as much a part of the piece as its stained glass windows. It was huge, so tall that I had to throw my head back to see the top of it, and even then it was too tall to comprehend, seeming to stretch endlessly into the clear blue sky. It was incredibly ornate as well: every inch of it was covered in elaborate statues, the figures blending into one another seamlessly. From a distance, all the miniature statues that made up the walls of the cathedral looked like mindless, nonsensical texture - it was only up close that the details came into focus.

We hailed a cab and left, finally. Mother was flustered and upset, partly because we didn't get to see the inside of the cathedral, but mostly because she had made a mistake by not allowing enough time. (In my mother's mind, she's always right, and when she's not, it means the world is ending, clearly.) Father was trying to calm her down by reassuring her over and over again that none of us really wanted to see the inside of the cathedral anyway, and wasn't the outside the whole point?, and besides, it's still under construction, we might as well just wait and come back when it's finished...

I just sat there quietly, listening to the American music on the radio and biting my tongue. I wanted to tell them that La Sagrada Familia wasn't projected to be finished for at least another twenty years, and both of them would probably be dead - or at least cranky and senile and not exactly up for world travel - by then, but I knew it would only make things worse, so I said nothing. Oh well. I would just come back by myself when it was finished and see it the way it was meant to be seen, as a whole piece and, most importantly, without my annoying parents tagging along.

We arrived back at the hotel around noon. There was a little deli across the street (well, alley) from our hotel, and though Mother fussed over how "safe" the food was, we didn't have many other options, so we each got a little sandwich of some sort for lunch. Mine was just ham on baked cheese bread, with no other condiments or dressings; very simple, but very good. As I thought the words to myself, the memory of someone else's words sprang up in my mind.

"_It's the fresh ingredients that really make the difference. In America, we add way too much extra stuff - seasonings and condiments and all that shit. It takes away from the authentic taste of the food, you know? Good food should be simple_..."

Mother and Father had already gone up to their room and I was making my way down the narrow hotel corridor, eating my sandwich as I walked, when I turned a corner and ran into - and I mean literally _ran into_ - who else? Bella.

"Shit!" she yelled, startled, as we smacked into each other. She staggered backwards, looked up, recognized me, and gasped in horror. "Oh God, I'm so sorry!"

"No, no, it's okay," I said, staring at her in bewilderment because I had just heard her voice in my mind and then, _boom_! There she was.

I had expected her to look a little rough, considering the day we'd had yesterday, but she didn't look hungover at all. On the contrary, she looked much better than she had before: the dark circles under her eyes were gone, her face was clean and grungy-make-up-free, her hair brushed and pulled back in a somewhat tame ponytail. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a plain black tank top, and small, diamond stud earrings in the shape of a heart - nothing glamorous and definitely not chic, but a huge improvement over yesterday's outfit. Without all the tie-dye and the smudged make-up, she looked almost...well, sort of pretty, actually.

I mean, she had really nice skin. And pretty eyes. That's all. Well...and she had a nice mouth, too... And then her body - slender, but shapely...

But that's not the point.

She noticed me staring and started to get a little paranoid. "What?" said Bella, raising a hand to her face. "What is it?"

"Nothing," I said, too quickly. "Nothing, I just - I was just thinking about you."

Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ. Why did I have to say that? It sounded like I was coming onto her or something. God.

She took it pretty well, though; I guess she was used to flirtation. "Ask and you shall receive," she said with a wink, an easy smile spreading across her face.

_Speak of the devil, more like,_ I thought.

"Well..." I stalled, trying to think of a non-awkward way to put an end to this interaction, but came up empty. "I guess I'll see you around, then."

"Alright," said Bella. "See ya."

I managed to move past her without touching her, which was relatively difficult considering how narrow the hallway was, and continued on my way. I had almost reached the end of the hall when I happened to glance back and see her heading off in the opposite direction, dragging a little pink suitcase on wheels.

I don't really know what moved me to do it, but something made me turn around and call her name then.

"Bella! Wait!"

"Yeah?" She glanced over her shoulder at me, her cheeks tinged pink again for some reason.

"Are you..." All of a sudden, my throat felt tight and dry. I coughed once to clear it. "Are you leaving already?"

"Yeah. We have to board by three."

"Board?"

She mistook my horror for confusion. "Board the ship, I mean," she clarified. "We're going on a cruise!"

"A...a cruise?" I repeated stupidly.

"Uh-huh," said Bella, beaming. She didn't understand what I was getting at. She couldn't have.

"What kind of cruise?"

"Um... I think it's Royal Carribean? I don't know... It's this European cruise thing - it goes from Spain to France to Italy and then back. Five days." She grinned. "Isn't that awesome? I'm so excited!"

"Yeah, that's really, um...exciting." For the first time in my life, I could literally feel myself growing paler, the blood draining from my face and my hands turning cold. My European adventure was rapidly turning into a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. Obnoxious Americans were invading my dream everywhere I turned!

"So, um..." Bella fidgeted with the handle on her suitcase. "Are you guys gonna stay in Barcelona for a while now, or what?"

"Well, actually..." I wondered vaguely if I could actually say the words without throwing up. Probably not, but I'd give it a try: "Actually, we're going on the same cruise."

And then her face lit up so much that I almost felt guilty for a second.

"Really? No way! That's great!"

"Yeah," I said, trying to force a smile. "It's really...uh, really great."

"Oooh, we can be buddies!" she gushed. "Our parents will keep each other entertained and then you and me can just hang out - "

"I," I corrected her.

She frowned. "...You, what?"

"I mean, it's _I_. You and _I_. Not you and _me_."

Bella stopped and looked me over, her pretty little mouth falling open slightly as she cocked one eyebrow at me. "Did you seriously just correct my grammar?"

She looked almost offended, but she also seemed to be holding back laughter. I wasn't sure how to gauge that sort of reaction, so I decided to just answer honestly.

"Well...yeah."

I half expected her to get angry, but she just smiled and shook her head. "You're an odd one, Edward Cullen. Actually, you're sort of a pompous bastard. But hey, at least you're genuine."

She winked at me once more and then turned away, dragging her little suitcase behind her down the hallway without another word. As usual, I felt that I should say something, but didn't know what to say or how to say it. So I just stood there at the end of the hall and watched her go, wondering how this obnoxious American girl had managed to get the best of me this time.

**-x-x-x-**

"We used the same travel agent," said Mother, sinking down onto the mini-sofa and burying her face in her hands. "On that new website that Carla recommended to me. We got the same travel package. We've booked all the same plane tickets, hotels, tours, everything! And then, of course, the cruise..."

Mother, Father, and I were gathered in my parents' room with our luggage at our feet, waiting until it was time to check out and catch a cab to the port. I had told them about my conversation with Bella and the discovery that her family was going on the same cruise we were going on, and then Mother had run into Renee in the lobby. Now, in the aftershock of learning that the Dwyers had booked the exact same vacation we had, the three of us were just staring into space in silence, not looking at each other, not speaking - as if having to share our precious European adventure with the Dwyers was a travesty beyond words.

"Well," said Father eventually, "I suppose we'll just have to make the best of it. What choice do we have?"

"I'm so sorry, everyone," said Mother. "I had no idea..."

"It's not your fault, Esme. Don't blame yourself."

I still couldn't get the image of Bella, half-smiling and shaking her head at me sadly, out of my head. I couldn't forget the calm, easy way she said it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world: "_Actually, you're sort of a pompous bastard_."

Was I?

I pictured the Dwyers: all friendly smiles and colloquial turns of phrase, seemingly oblivious to our disdain. But maybe they saw right through us anyway. Maybe they were _so _nice, in fact, that they would continue to be kind to us even after we had proved ourselves to be pretentious assholes. The thought of it made my stomach turn.

"They're not that bad," I said finally.

Mother sighed. "I suppose not. Oh well. As your father says, what choice do we have? We'll just have to make the best of it."

I had braced myself for running into the Dwyers again in the lobby, but they weren't there. We didn't see them outside, either, as we dragged our luggage down the little alleyway and out into La Rambla to hail a cab.

This cab driver didn't speak much English, and the drive to the port was awkward, but mercifully short. No one said anything because there was nothing to say, and the cab driver was listening to an American rap song that was way too dirty to be played on the radio back home. In the silence, I entertained myself by staring out the window as we drove down La Rambla: there was the place where Bella and I had run across traffic the day before, there was the place where the thief had finally dropped the backpack, there was the restaurant where we had eaten and she had gotten me drunk for the second time in my life...

These were the memories of Barcelona that I would carry with me always, strange and rather unpleasant though they were. Jesus.

The port was already a mess of taxis and stupid tourists, all of them milling around uselessly and generally getting in everyone's way. The cab driver found an empty space to stop and let us out, and helped unload our luggage. I paid him and gave him a big tip (just as Mother and Father held me responsible for all interactions that required speaking Spanish, they put me in charge of any transaction involving foreign currency as well), which made him happy.

That's what's so great about Europe: the people there are so much easier to please than Americans. Americans are ungrateful; they can always find something to complain about. That's how we came about our independence, really - through dissatisfaction and endless complaining, paired with our supremely undignified guerilla warfare tactics. Our textbooks like to glorify the Revolutionary War a lot, but the way I imagine it, the British were just so stunned by our ragged, pitchfork-wielding army of farmers that they were too bewildered to fight back properly.

Anyway, I tipped the cab driver and he drove away into the sunset, surely relieved to be rid of yet another set of clueless American tourists. We gathered up all our bags and got in the back of the huge line that stretched all the way around the side of the big, warehouse-esque building that I assumed we had to go through in order to board the ship, which was nowhere in sight. I guessed it was on the other side of the building, hidden from view.

"Oh, dear," said Mother, standing on her tip-toes to see over the heads of all the people ahead of us in line, trying to judge how long our wait would be. "This is such a horrid mess. We'll be standing here all day. And it's so hot! Edward, did you remember your sunscreen?"

"Yes, Mother," I said, though I had completely forgotten. Oh well. I guess I could use a little sun anyway. Surely we wouldn't be out here long enough for my skin to burn.

The minutes ticked by, and the sunshine on my face felt hotter and hotter. I was bored out of my mind. Normally in these situations I would have pulled out my iPhone, but I had disabled the internet on it while we were traveling, so I wouldn't be charged ridiculous international rates. I had no one to call or text and I hadn't put any games on my iPhone (I found that most of the iPhone games were "a waste of time and brain cells," as Mother liked to say.) I resorted to eavesdropping on the conversations around me for entertainment.

Mother and Father were having some dull conversation about a local political election back home, which I tuned out. Most of the other conversations around us I couldn't quite make out, or were in a language I couldn't understand. I had expected to find myself surrounded by more clones of the Dwyers: mundane American families who were attracted to the cruise by the idea of free food, gambling, and laying out on the deck tanning all day, who couldn't care less about European culture or history. I was wrong. Everyone else in line seemed to be speaking a different language, and the bits and pieces of English that I heard were spoken in various accents - usually British.

Behind me, I heard high, female voices talking quickly in what I assumed was Swedish. I snuck a glance over my shoulder and was delighted to see four very European-looking young girls. They were probably a little older than me, maybe college age, all of them dressed fashionably with JanSport backpacks slung over their shoulders.

The one standing closest to me noticed me looking and our eyes met for a second; I looked away, turning back to my parents, as all four girls burst into giggles behind me. I heard them whispering to each other in their language, the way teenage girls do. It seemed like a positive sign to me, so I turned so that I was halfway facing them, halfway facing Mother and Father, leaning against the railing behind us casually. And then I glanced towards the girls again.

They were all pale, delicate-looking creatures - classically European. The one standing next to me, who had noticed me first, was a dream. She was tall and thin, with blue eyes and platinum blonde hair that was only a shade darker than her porcelain skin. She smiled at me shyly, and I noticed that her teeth were sort of crooked, but I liked that. It gave her a charming, natural sort of look; not like most American girls, who invariably wore braces at some point in their lives, resulting in cheesy, too-perfect smiles, like the ones you see in denture ads.

Here she was: the perfect European girl I had been looking for. Now all I had to do was charm her with my suave American style...

I was about to scrape up the nerve to say something to her in English, in the blind hope that she would understand some of it (after all, English _was_ the universal language, right?), when I was distracted by the sudden awareness that Mother and Father had fallen silent.

"Oh, dear," said Mother in her usual worried way.

I turned to her. "What? What's wrong?"

She sighed. "Oh, nothing. I was just hoping to be rid of them, that's all. I mean, honestly, out of all the thousands of people on this ship..."

I followed her gaze and received such a jolt of horror that I actually jumped a little: the Dwyers were standing farther up in line, almost to the entrance of the building. Renee was jumping up and down and waving at us with a huge smile on her face, while Phil grinned and tipped his baseball cap in our direction. I didn't see Bella anywhere.

"Oh, dear," said Mother again as Renee began beckoning us forward with a furious wave of her hand. "I think they want us to join them in line."

"Just tell them we can't, Esme," said Father. "Tell them it wouldn't be polite."

"Well..." Mother glanced over at the Dwyers, turned back to Father and I, and then surveyed the distance between their spot in line and ours, and I swear to God, it was like I could read her thoughts in that moment. "It wouldn't be so bad. They're just trying to be friendly. And it would save us so much time - we would be skipping at least a hundred people - "

"Sweetheart," said Father gently, "don't you think it's a little rude to cut?"

"We're not cutting!" said Mother. She picked up her bags with a purposeful look on her face, and I knew the decision had been made. "We're just going to stand in line with our good friends, the Dwyers. There's nothing wrong with that."

She turned away from us then, pushing her way through the crowd of people to join the Dwyers.

"Seriously?" I snapped. "The Dwyers? I thought they were _terribly pedestrian_."

"Well," sighed Father, "your mother is nothing if not an opportunist."

Father and I had no choice but to pick up our own bags and follow Mother. And so it was with great bitterness and resentment that I slung my backpack over one shoulder, grabbed my suitcase, cast one last longing look in the beautiful blonde Swedish girl's direction, and started shoving my way up through the line.

_Goddammit. Foiled by the Dwyers once again. And we get to share our whole vacation with them. Jesus._

It was going to be a very long sixteen days.

**Footnotes:**

**1. Antoni Gaudi was a Modernist architect, native to Barcelona, where many of his works - including La Sagrada Familia and Park Guell - are located. He was part of the Art Nouveau movement and was famous for incorporating whimsical, organic shapes and bright colors into his buildings. Check out my profile for links to more information on La Sagrada Familia and Park Guell.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Chapter Five**

It was only our second day in Europe, and Mother and Father and I were already behaving like the pushy Americans we always swore we weren't, shoving our way up through a long line to join our friends up front. But we weren't, cutting, _noooo_ - this definitely wasn't cutting.

Sure, Mother. Sure.

"She's going to get punched in the face," I said as I looked up and saw Mother squeezing between two huge men wearing German soccer - I mean, _football_ - jerseys. A second later, I accidentally hit one woman in the leg with my suitcase, and though I apologized profusely, that didn't stop her from screaming at me in Polish.

"Actually," Father corrected me when we had finally escaped from the Polish woman, "_we're_ going to get punched in the face."

Miraculously, we managed to battle our way up to the Dwyers unscathed, and by the time Father and I got there, Mother was already busy blowing smoke up their asses, pretending to be best friends with Renee just so we could get a little farther up in line. God. The whole thing was so humiliating; typical suburban American behavior. What was Mother _thinking_?

The Dwyers were either oblivious to Mother's intentions, or else they were determined to turn a blind eye to it. Either way, they seemed genuinely happy to see us, for some reason. As soon as Father and I emerged from the crowd, Phil grabbed me by the shoulder, pulled me into a masculine sort of man-hug, and clapped me on the back heartily.

"Edward! My man! How's the hangover, son?" He winked at me, throwing his head back and cackling maniacally like the evil Texan villain he was. And in that moment, all I wanted was to be a supervillain too, so I could use my laser vision to reduce him to a mute, nonexistent pile of ash.

_Dear Lord Jesus_, I prayed, even though I had been an atheist for five years, _please don't let Mother hear, please don't let Mother hear, please don't let Mother hear..._

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Mother bossily, drawing herself up to her full, scary-professor height. "Edward doesn't drink alcohol. He is well aware of the negative effects of alcohol on the developing adolescent brain."

_Thanks a lot, Jesus_, I thought bitterly. _Now I remember why I became an atheist._

"Oh, okay. How's the developing adolescent brain, then?" Phil guffawed, poking at the side of my head with a single stubby finger. "Any negative effects yet?"

"Phil!" hissed Renee. She shot me an apologetic look and slapped his hands away from me. "Stoppit!"

I realized suddenly that Bella must have told him about the sangria yesterday - otherwise, how would he have known I was hungover? All of this was her fault! I looked around for her, wanting to shoot her a death glare, at the very least.

She was standing behind her mother with her back turned to us, her arms folded over her chest as she stared straight ahead. I was trying to think of a way to subtly get her attention when Renee did the job for me.

"Bella? Look who's here!"

Bella turned her head to look at us, but otherwise didn't move an inch. Through a mask of cool indifference, she forced a very slight smile. "Hello."

"And look, your little friend Edward is here, too," said Renee, as if Bella and I were two-year-olds forced to play together in the backyward while our mothers sipped margaritas and gossiped nearby. God.

Bella rolled her eyes at her mother when she thought no one was looking, but I saw it, and smiled inwardly to myself. At least I wasn't the only one being humiliated here.

"Hello, Edward," said Bella frostily.

I nodded once in acknowledgement, but then Mother prodded me in the ribs, indicating that I should say more. "Hi," I said, shooting a glare in Mother's direction. So much for "_I don't want you associating with those people_," huh?

Bella didn't force a smile this time. She held my gaze with her big brown eyes for a split second, just to humor Renee, and then turned away again.

Strange. Was she still giving me the cold shoulder, just because I had corrected her grammar earlier? Because, according to her, I was a "pompous bastard"? Girls are insane.

Our parents embarked on some boring conversation about the weather as the line inched forward slowly. I checked my watch. We had already been standing out here for forty minutes, and, other than cutting in line, we had made little progress.

As time passed and Bella refused to even so much as look at me, though we were standing right next to each other in line with nothing _else_ to look at, it became clearer and clearer that she was definitely ignoring me on purpose. Was she angry? Did she just dislike me? What the hell was her problem?

I didn't particularly like her myself, but there was no one else around to talk to, and my curiosity was driving me crazy. So I cleared my throat, adjusted my glasses, and turned to her with what I hoped was a charming smile.

"So, uh... Which country are you looking forward to the most: France or Italy?"

She turned to look at me out of the corner of her eye, her lips twisting into a small, humorless smile. But that was the only acknowledgement I got.

"I mean, I'm fluent in French, and I'm going to school in Paris in the fall, so I'm really looking forward to France," I babbled, filling up the silence with my own stupid voice. "But then again, Italy has more to offer as far as ancient history - their culture is a little richer. And then, of course, Italian food is fantastic. You can't beat a good lasagna, right?"

I had noticed that the subject of cooking and food always seemed to interest her, so I thought this last line was a bit of genius on my part. Unfortunately, Bella was less impressed.

"Look, Edward," she said, fixing me with an incredibly steely look for someone with such warm brown eyes, "you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. I'm perfectly capable of entertaining myself, believe it or not."

With that, she folded her arms across her chest again and turned away from me, her jaw set in determination, her chin lifted in haughty indifference. She didn't just close the door on that conversation - she slammed it in my face and left me out in the cold.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. All the rich kids back home had hated me. It only stood to reason that a trashy American girl I happened across in Europe would hate me as well.

It was stupid of me to think that I could run from who I was. Obviously, there was something about me that made me repulsive and completely unlikeable, and I wasn't going to be any less repulsive or unlikeable in Europe than I was back in America. For months, I had entertained this ridiculous daydream that coming to Europe would change me somehow, turn me into someone gorgeous and stylish and charming, beloved by everyone I met... But now that I was here, I was just as friendless and alone as ever. Now I was just friendless and alone in a foreign country.

"Well, I'm sorry," I muttered to Bella, as the line moved forward and we stepped inside the safe air-conditioning of the building at last. "I didn't mean to patronize you."

I looked over at her and she was watching me closely. Her mouth fell open and she started to say something - but then Mother grabbed me by the back of my shirt, pushing me forward, ahead of her and away from Bella.

"Come, now, dear," said Mother, "we're boarding!"

She dragged me away to one of the desks on the far side of the room we had just stepped into, where a man in a ridiculous ascot was waiting to register us. As we reached the desk, the man asked us for I.D.s, and I was distracted as I rifled through my backpack for my passport and driver's license. When I finally glanced back in Bella's direction, she was gone.

**-x-x-x-**

Just like back in the hotel in Barcelona, I got my own cabin on the cruise. Most kids probably would have been relieved to have their own separate room, but honestly, it just made me feel more alone. Instead of one big bed, like my parents had in their cabin, my room was equipped with two twin beds, and the sight of the second bed - lonely and untouched - depressed me.

I unpacked in the silence of my empty room. There was too much space in the drawers and in the closet for what little clothes I had packed. The bathroom was small, but I still had plenty of room to lay out all my toiletries for my shower later tonight.

Once I was all unpacked, there was nothing else to do. There was a small TV in my room, but it only got five stations; two were in Spanish, and the other three were the BBC, CNN, and Nickelodeon. I gave up on television and decided to read instead.

I was about thirty pages into _The Sun Also Rises_ (for the fourth time - it was my favorite book) when there was a sharp rap on the door. I put the book down and crossed the tiny cabin in a few long strides and opened the door to see the last person I wanted to see at the moment: Mother.

"The ship's about to take off, dear," said Mother. "Don't you want to come and see?"

I suppressed a groan. "See what, Mother?"

"The ship leaving port, silly!"

She didn't wait for my answer, but reached around behind me to pull my door shut and nudged my shoulder, urging me down the hall towards the elevator. Father followed behind her, with that blank look on his face - the one he always gets when he's enduring something unpleasant for his wife's sake.

The ship was huge, like a massive luxury hotel built into a boat. It had sixteen decks, and the top two decks were devoted entirely to pools, hot tubs, mini golf, a rock wall, a kids play center, millions and millions of lounge chairs, a bar, a mini wet bar in every pool area, and a reggae band that played frothy island-music versions of seventies pop songs for middle-aged women in bikinis to dance to. The lower decks included a spa, an arcade room, a "teen club," an ice skating rink, several dining rooms and restaurants, a casino (of course), and a shopping mall-esque strip of shops and boutiques. To the average American, it was floating paradise.

But I was not the average American. Nothing on the cruise ship was of any interest of me, except for perhaps the bar, depending on how the rest of the trip went.

The top deck was so packed with people waiting to watch the ship leave port that it was almost impossible to find an empty space near the railing. We finally found a spot just in time; just as I was leaning against the railing, staring down at the deep blue water below, the ship's bellowing horn sounded, and then we were off. A cheer went up all around, glasses clinking as passengers who were already half-drunk mumbled toasts to one another. The band struck up some kind of cheerful music and everyone started dancing; saggy women in bikinis bumped up against fat, hairy old men in hideous neon swimming trunks, while skinny little girls (most of them topless) and boys ran around underfoot.

The whole thing made me a little queasy, to be honest.

"I think I'm going to go for a walk," I told Mother and Father. They were both sipping beers now, and they didn't care what I did anymore; Father said, "Alright, alright," and Mother said something along the lines of, "You run along now, dear."

I walked along the edge of the top deck until I reached the rear half of the ship. There weren't as many people here, and I stood leaning against the railing and staring down into the sea for a while. At first, I was worried about getting seasick because, while the hangover had pretty much subsided, I still didn't feel too hot. But, strangely, the longer I stood there looking out over the water, the calmer I felt.

My thoughts wandered, and I found myself thinking about Bella again. I wondered if she had watched the ship leave port. Probably. I pictured her out on the main deck dancing with everyone else, in a string bikini with some kind of alcoholic beverage close at hand, a goofy smile on her face. Maybe she would be wearing the ladybug earrings again.

And then I wondered if I would ever see her again. Mother said we had booked all the same tours and even the same hotel in London, but it was a big ship - a big city. We could easily see all the same sights and stay in all the same places and never once cross paths with the Dwyers. It was a thought that would have comforted me before, but now, standing all alone at the deserted end of the ship, remembering the way Bella had smiled shyly at me when I offered to buy her that bracelet back in Barcelona, I felt a little sorry.

_Sorry for what?_ I asked myself. Why did I feel all this...all this guilt? Because I knew I had hurt her feelings?

_Had_ I hurt her feelings? Earlier this afternoon, she had called me a "pompous bastard," and then later she had basically told me not to patronize her by trying to strike up a conversation. She hadn't seemed sad or hurt in either instance, but cold and indifferent - angry, at worst. If her feelings were hurt, she hid it well.

So why did I feel such a deep sense of regret whenever I thought of her? Maybe I just didn't like the idea that she didn't like me. Maybe it just bothered me that I wasn't coming off as the suave American expatriate that I had hoped to be in Europe. Maybe I was just upset because I had managed to alienate yet another person - in this case, a girl I had only known for a day and a half.

Yes, that was it. It had nothing to do with Bella, really. It was just my wounded ego.

At least, that's what I told myself as I walked back to my cabin alone to shower and get dressed for dinner.

**-x-x-x-**

Mother had signed us up for the late dinner seating "to give us more time for sight-seeing," she said. But on day one, the ship was traveling from Barcelona, Spain to Cannes, France, and there were no sights to see at the moment - therefore at eight-thirty, I found myself pacing the small space of my cabin, trying to ignore my growling stomach as I waited for nine o'clock to roll around.

At nine on the dot, Mother and Father knocked on my door and we all walked down to the dining hall together. On the elevator, Mother frowned at me and brushed at an invisible spot on my shirt.

"Edward, dear, don't you think you could have worn something a little nicer?" she fussed.

I looked down at my outfit: my nice khakis, my Sperries, and a green polo shirt. With a sinking feeling, I glanced over at my parents and discovered that Mother was wearing one of her nice Sunday dresses and Father was in a suit. I sighed.

"I just thought I'd save my good suit for the formal dinner night."

"Well... I suppose so," said Mother reluctantly. The elevator stopped on the third deck, where our dining room was located, and she paused to glare disapprovingly at my clothes once more before stepping out of the elevator. "I just think you could have put a little more effort into your appearance on our first night on the ship, dear, that's all."

"I'm sorry," I said as we crossed the lobby, headed for the entrance to the dining room. "I didn't really know what was appropriate."

Apparently, no one else knew either, because we passed whole families dressed in all different shades of formality. Some were in full formal wear, men in tuxedos and women in poofy ballgowns; some were dressed in what the typical American might call their "Sunday best" - like my parents; some were dressed more casually, like me; some looked like teenagers roaming the mall in jeans and T-shirts; still others looked as though they had thrown on a pair of crappy shorts and a Hawaiin print shirt and come straight to dinner from the hot tub on top deck, wet hair, sunglasses, exposed bikini strings, and all.

Other than some of the people we were sharing the dining room with, though, the dining room was very nice. There were three floors of dining rooms, and we were on the bottom-most one; the next two floors were completely open in the middle, so that one could stand against the railing on the top floor and look down at the bottom floor having dinner. At the far end of the room, a huge double staircase connected the three floors, and a beautiful chandelier completed the look. As a host led us to our table, I felt like I was walking into _Titanic_.

Our host led us to a wide, round table with eight chairs arranged around it - two of which were already occupied by a middle-aged couple who watched us with narrowed eyes as we approached.

"My name is Enrique and I will be serving you tonight," said our host in a thick Spanish accent, pulling out a chair for Mother and indicating that Father and I should sit on either side of her. "We have limited seating on the ship, so we must group some parties together at the same table. I hope it will not be an inconvenience?"

"Oh, no, no," said Mother graciously. "No inconvenience at all."

"Very good. There is one more family coming. Should we wait for them, or would you like to order now?"

"Oh, we can wait," said Mother, just as my stomach growled loudly. I checked my watch - it was 9:15, and I hadn't eaten since noon. It took what little self-control I possessed at this point not to say some words I knew I would later regret to her.

"All right, I will be back when the rest are here, okay?" said Enrique, and then he flitted away to wait on another table.

Mother and Father were seated right beside the other couple, and they tried to make small talk with them. They quickly discovered that the couple was from Spain, and they didn't speak very much English. Once we had all learned each other's names and places of origin, there wasn't much else to say; the Spanish couple began speaking quietly to each other in their own language, while Mother and Father complained about the lack of a dress code in the dining room.

"I mean, really," said Mother as a woman wearing a bikini top and short shorts and nothing else moved past us with a wailing baby on one hip. "This is a nice dining room! If they want to dress like trash, why don't they go upstairs to the all-you-can-eat buffet, where they belong?"

"Some people just have no class, dear," said Father. He was staring over my shoulder, towards the front doors, when something caught his eye. His face paled, frozen into a look of dread. "Speaking of no class..."

Mother and I followed his gaze to see none other than the Dwyers weaving their way between tables, moving closer to us by the second. Bella tripped and almost did a face plant, but a man wearing a tuxedo caught her fall; she blushed and apologized profusely, then hurried after her parents. Renee had spotted us now, and was waving furiously - as was her customary greeting, I suppose.

"Oh dear God," said Mother.

"I second that," I muttered.

"Hel-_lo_, Cullens!" shrieked Renee as she reached our table. She came to stand behind Mother and I, placing one long-nailed hand on the back of Mother's chair and the other in my hair. I suppressed a shudder. "You didn't tell us you had the late seating, too!"

"I didn't think to mention it," said Mother. She turned in her seat to look up at Renee, forcing a hideously fake smile that would surely strike fear into the heart of any small child.

"Well, we got lucky," said Renee. She sat down in the second chair over from mine, and Mother and Father both cringed simultaneously - _Surely the Dwyers aren't our tablemates! _their eyes screamed in terror. "We made friends with this adorable little family from Scotland - we were all playing mini golf earlier, you know... So anyway, they had the late seating and so did we, so we all walked in here together. Phil spotted you guys sitting here and said something about how we knew you guys and the Scottish family said that they were supposed to sit here with you, but since they had a party of three and we had a party of three, they offered to trade places with us so _we_ could sit with you. Isn't that just the sweetest thing?"

Renee placed her elbows squarely on the table and clapped her hands together, beaming at us as if she had just told the most adorable story ever. Throughout her explanation, I had watched the looks on my parents' faces grow more and more horrified by the second; how Renee failed to notice this, I will never know.

"Oh, yes," said Mother faintly, once she had managed to recover from the shock of learning that yes, the Dwyers would be having dinner with us _every night _of this damn cruise. "So sweet."

"I thought so. They were really a lovely family. We'll all have to get together later on, play some more mini-golf."

"Ohhh." Mother pressed her lips together tightly, as if to physically choke back certain words. "That would be nice, wouldn't it, Carlisle?"

"Oh...yes," said Father, wincing. "There's nothing I love more than trying to knock a golfball through a windmill, across a see-saw, and into a fake alligator's mouth. Especially when there are sound effects. No greater joy in the world."

His sarcasm was so thinly concealed that Mother shot him a warning glare, but luckily, Renee wasn't listening anymore. Phil and Bella had finally made it to our table - Phil absorbed with his cell phone and Bella wringing her hands out, looking awkward. She tried to take the seat on Renee's other side, next to the Spanish couple, but her mother stopped her.

"Bella, hun, why don't you sit by Edward, since you two get along so well?"

So, with a sigh, Bella sat down next to me. Immediately, I was torn between three different emotions: anxiety because Bella clearly wasn't pleased to be sitting next to me; hope because at least now I would have the chance to smooth things over between us and prove to myself that not everyone who met me had to hate me; and dread because, like her parents, Bella was pretty tacky in the classic American way, and generally annoying to be around. Such was my conflict: I didn't like her, but I wanted her to like _me_.

_Ridiculous_, I thought to myself. _Why should you care?_

I knew that I shouldn't. But I did.

Our waiter returned shortly, passing out menus and making a big show of tucking in all the women's chairs. "My name is Enrique and I will be your server tonight, and every night for the rest of the cruise. Unfortunately we have only limited space here on the ship, so we must seat some parties together - I hope this will not be a problem."

"Oh, no," said Renee, "we're all friends!"

"Oh. Excellent." Enrique glanced back and forth between the smiling Renee and haughty Mother, bewildered at the thought of the two of them being friends. Then he shook his head once as if to clear it and explained tonight's specials, took our drink orders, and disappeared.

As we waited on our drinks, the adults made small talk amongst themselves, Phil and Renee occasionally trying to draw Mother and Father into their conversation, and Mother and Father smoothly avoiding them. It was sort of entertaining to watch my parents' constant rebuffs of Phil and Renee's displays of friendship, and for a while I was so absorbed in eavesdropping that I almost forgot about Bella. To my credit, she was totally silent at my side - which I already knew wasn't like her, though I hadn't known her for very long.

She was leaning back in her seat, fidgeting with the paper sticker that had been wrapped around the napkin on her silverware. She seemed to be completely oblivious to me, and I took advantage of her distraction to study her for a moment. She had changed once again and now she was wearing a blue sundress that showed off her pale, delicate shoulders and a tiny black dot of a birthmark just below her collarbone. She had put on more make-up: heavy black eyeliner and mascara and glittery blue eyeshadow to match her dress. There were no ladybug earrings in sight, though, just the same heart-shaped diamond studs she had been wearing earlier.

Now she bit her lip and stared intensely at the little scrap of paper as she shredded it into tiny pieces, and, despite the garish eye make-up, there was something strangely sexy about the way she looked just then. Then she noticed me staring and glanced at me sideways, and the spell was broken.

_Now's your chance_, I told myself. _Say something!_

"You're making a mess," I said, just because it was the first thing to come to mind. A moment later, I realized it probably wasn't the friendliest way to open up a conversation, but...oh well. _Too late now._

"Oh," said Bella. She flushed pink and scooped the paper shreds off the edge of the table and into her cupped hand. "I didn't notice. I do that sometimes. Nervous habit."

"Why are you nervous?"

"I'm not." She dropped the little pile of shavings in the center of the table, where it would be concealed between the salt and pepper shakers. "I'm just...bored."

"Oh. Well, that's perfectly understandable, I suppose."

"Yeah, tell me about it." She laughed a little, shaking her head absently. A few seconds passed and she turned back to me, her glossy pink lips pursed. "I'm sorry about what Phil said earlier, by the way," she said in a low voice, so that the adults wouldn't overhear. "About the hangover. I didn't mean - I mean, I didn't think - "

"I know," I said, shrugging. "It's okay."

"Your parents didn't get mad at you or anything, did they?"

"No. They don't care that much."

"Oh." She bit her lip again, and there it was - the sexy face was back. "I'm sorry."

I didn't understand. "For what?"

I stared at her, frowning, and at first, she only stared back. Finally, Enrique returned with our drinks, and she shook her head at me, turning to the task of adding about twenty packets of sugar to her iced tea in silence.

Enrique took our orders, which took a while, since there were eight people at our table and we were all ordering three courses of food each - not to mention the fact that he had to switch languages when he got to the Spanish couple, switching deftly from English to Spanish and then back to English again when he got to the Dwyers.

After we had all ordered, there was nothing left to do but wait for our food. Phil and Renee had apparently given up on talking to my parents, for the time being, and were having their own conversation in low voices. Mother and Father weren't speaking at all, but were gazing around the dining room with arrogant, disapproving stares. As time passed, I became more and more aware of Bella sitting just inches away from me in silence. I felt that same old pressure to speak (though I didn't know what to say), rising up inside of me and I thought I might go mad.

_You don't have to talk to her any more_, I tried to tell myself. _You just spoke to her a second ago. And she clearly doesn't _want_ to talk to you. She even told you not to talk to her earlier, remember?_

But I couldn't stop running through our last awkward exchange in my head, wishing that I had said this or that instead. Why couldn't I have come up with something charming or witty? So maybe Bella wasn't the best company ever - at least, not for someone like me - but I could still have a stimulating conversation with her, couldn't I? I could try, anyway. At least if I screwed up, it wouldn't matter because I wasn't concerned with impressing her. It would be good practice.

I had just succeeded in talking myself into starting another conversation with Bella and was about to bring up a new topic when she beat me to it.

"So," said Bella shyly, "you're going to school in Paris, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," I stammered, taken a little off guard.

"That's cool. So you're, what - a sophomore, junior...?"

"Oh, no, uh - freshman." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was kicking myself. Why hadn't I just agreed with her, told her I was an upperclassman? Older college guys are so much more attractive than _freshmen_.

"Really?" she said. "Huh. I thought you looked older." She studied my face for one long moment, and of course my body chose that moment to react with a blush. God. "Must be the glasses," she decided.

I forced a laugh, which came out sounding uncomfortable and strange, so then I faked a cough to try and cover up the weirdness; I think the whole thing just resulted in even more weirdness, actually. _Real smooth, Cullen._

After a few more seconds of awkward silence, I came up with this gem: "So, uh, what about you? Are you going to, uh...school?"

"Yes." Bella flashed me a strangely condescending smile. "I'll be a freshman, too, in the fall. I'm going to NYU."

"Oh, yeah," I said as her words triggered some vague memory. "You said that yesterday, I think."

"Yes. I think I did."

So that was the end of that, and more awkward silence followed. It hadn't exactly been riveting conversation, but hey, I was making progress. Back in high school, there were times when I would go weeks without saying anything to anyone, except for what had to be said during classwork. Even my hesitant, touch-and-go conversation with Bella was an improvement over _that_.

A few minutes later, our first course - appetizers - arrived. It was nearly ten o'clock by then, and I didn't think I had ever been so glad to see a salad in my whole life. I had already speared a few pieces of lettuce on the end of my fork and was about to tuck in when I noticed Renee put a hand on Bella's arm, stopping her from taking her first bite.

"Bella," said Renee, "would you say grace, please?"

"Mom," said Bella, giving her mother a loaded look, "do you really think...?"

"Yes, I do. Just because we're on vacation doesn't mean that we shouldn't be grateful for what we have. In fact we should be _extra_ grateful. Now say the blessing, please."

With a sigh, Bella complied, and the three of them joined hands. Bella closed her eyes and began, "Lord, thank you for the world so - "

"Bella," said Renee, "don't you think the Cullens would like to be included as well?"

Mother, Father, and I all gaped as we realized what she meant. "Oh, no, no," said Mother, "we're not - "

"Please," Renee insisted. "We're like a family now, aren't we? Let us pray."

So Bella took my hand, and Mother and Father and I clasped our hands together, and the Spanish couple joined our quaint little prayer circle as well, though I'm not sure they knew what was going on. It had been so long since I had prayed like this that I wasn't sure what to do, so I just bowed my head and closed my eyes and hoped that was good enough.

Luckily, Bella's blessing was quick and painless - not like the long, rambling, laundry list prayers I remembered from Easter Sundays with my grandparents long ago. "Dear Lord," she said, "thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the birds that sing, thank you, God, for everything. Amen."

"Amen," repeated Renee and Phil.

"Amen," said Mother and Father and I, somewhat belatedly, as the Spanish couple crossed themselves.

"How charming," I heard Mother say to Father under her breath, and they both smirked.

"Yes," Father agreed, "very quaint."

We were all so hungry that we ate in complete silence, too occupied with stuffing our faces to talk. Once Enrique had taken away the empty plates of our first course and replaced them with the main course, we all had enough food in our stomachs to make casual conversation as we ate.

"So what is it you folks do, exactly?" said Phil, glancing across the table at Mother and Father as he sawed a thick steak into little pieces.

"Well," said Mother, "I am a qualified psychiatrist, but I have recently given up practicing in order to focus on teaching psychology at the university level. I work on research in the field as well, when I have the time; I just published a fairly significant article on the effects of human growth hormone and similar substances on the developing adolescent brain."

"Oh, yes, I'm concerned about that, too," said Renee, nodding fervently. "We only eat organic foods now. I didn't want Bella growing up with chemicals and hormones and pesticides out the wazoo!"

"Hm, yes," said Mother. She raised her eyebrows and took a long gulp of her wine. "The wazoo..."

"Speaking of," said Phil, leaning across the table towards Mother, "I got a great joke for ya, doc."

Mother narrowed her eyes at him, watching him warily as if she expected him to lunge across the table at her at any moment. "...All right," she said finally.

"Okay, here it is: How do ya make a hormone?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mother, blinking at him in her flustered, angry way. She hated not knowing the correct answer to anything - even if it was just the punchline of some dumb, redneck joke.

"You don't pay her!"

Phil burst out into hysterical laughter at his own joke, clapping his hands and leaning back in his seat, going red in the face. Mother scowled at him in pure, unadulterated disgust; Father looked mildly amused but quickly extinguished any hint of humor that might have lurked in his face before his wife could see it. Renee giggled once, for her husband's sake, but her cheeks turned a little pink with embarrassment.

"That is...incredibly insensitive," said Mother after a moment.

Bella, who had sat completely still and silent throughout the entire exchange, looked over at Phil still doubled over in laughter and rolled her eyes. "It's not that funny, Phil."

"But it...but it is!" Phil choked out through great guffaws of laughter. "It's...hilarious!"

"It's _retarded_," said Bella, and I swear to God, I think Mother's eyeballs almost popped out of her skull.

"_So_ insensitive," said Mother again under her breath, staring down at her plate as she delicately sliced her chicken breast into little slivers. "Unbe_lie_vable..."

For his part, Phil seemed to be completely oblivious to Mother's disgust. Once he had stopped laughing and his face was a normal color again, he said, "So, what about you, Carlisle? What do you do?"

Just as Father opened his mouth to reply, Mother cut him off. "Carlisle works in the medical field as well," she said curtly.

"Oh, okay," said Phil through a mouthful of steak. "So, Edward, both of your parents are doctors - does that mean you're gonna grow up to be some kinda super doctor or somethin'?"

"Uh..."

"Like what's-his-name - on TV. You know, the crippled one that's always popping pills." He turned to Renee, who shrugged helplessly. "You know - he's a real smart-ass..."

"House?" said Bella.

"Yeah, that guy!" He turned back to me. "Like House?"

"Um..." I had no idea who this "House" person was, or how it related to me and my future career choices, so I decided just to wing it. "Well, actually - "

"Edward isn't sure what he's interested in yet, as far as a career path goes," Mother interjected. "He's a terribly indecisive boy by nature, you see - he gets it from his father. Personally, I think he'll most likely end up in law - "

"I hate law, Mother," I said through gritted teeth.

"Now, how do you know you hate law, dear?" said Mother, in her most obnoxious know-it-all tone. "Have you ever practiced law?"

"Well - "

"Have you?" she demanded.

"_No_, but - "

"Then how can you possibly know that you hate law? You can't. You've simply ruled out the possibility of enjoying law before you could ever so much as experience it - why do you think that is, dear? Is it a pathological fear of failure? Or is it just an act of rebellion against your father and I because you know it's what we - "

"Don't psychoanalyze me, Mother!" I snapped. "I'm not one of your patients."

"Clients, dear, clients," she corrected me.

"Fine, then. I'm not a client. I'm your son."

"Yes, dear, and I'm your mother. I only want the best for you." She patted my hand patronizingly. "You have a highly analytical mind, dear - you need a career that will challenge you to use all your gifts. I think law would be perfect for you."

"I think you should stay out of it and let me decide for myself," I muttered.

"You need space. You don't want your parents running your life anymore. Quite natural for an eighteen-year-old." She turned to the Dwyers and explained, "It's in the later teenage years that adolescents are beginning to cut all ties from their childhood, branching out into their own adult lives. They are still very attached to their parents and their childhood, but want to grow up and be on their own, so they push their old life away - the conflict between the old wants and needs and the new results in much of the cliche teenage angst that we all went through at some point."

Renee nodded as if all of this made perfect sense and it was exactly the kind of conversation she was looking for over dinner on her European vacation. Phil was less enthusiastic; "Jeez..." he said under his breath as he turned back to his dinner. On my other side, Bella bit her lip and shot me a sympathetic look when Mother wasn't watching.

I focused my pasta, stabbing it with my fork unnecessarily and pretending the noodles were Mother's face. I had butchered my dinner pretty well and hadn't eaten another bite of it when, a few minutes later, I felt Bella nudge me under the table.

I jumped, startled, and followed her gaze, Under the table, she was holding out what looked to be an old, scratched up, outdated clunker of a cell phone. I took it from her and flipped it open. On the tiny, blurred screen, Bella had left me a message.

"_i dont blame you. i wouldnt want to be a lawyer either._"

Oh, how comforting. As if that were even an option for her anyway. God.

I glanced over at her, and she smiled at me encouragingly. With a sigh, I handed the phone back to her. Great - my life was so shitty and pathetic that even the trashy American girl, who had hated my guts just a few hours ago, took pity on me now. Jesus.

_Dear God, _I prayed silently_, if you ever existed, will you please kill me now and put me out of my misery? Thanks in advance. Love, Edward._

**-x-x-x-**

It was well past eleven o'clock by the time we finished all three courses, plus after-dinner coffee and schnopps. Mother and Father and I said goodnight to the Dwyers (I heaved an inner sigh of relief, as I'm sure my parents did as well) and went up to our rooms.

"Try and get some sleep, dear," said Mother as she told me goodnight out in the hall. "We have a busy day ahead of us. Cannes! Aren't you excited?"

"Yes, Mother."

She smiled at me and kissed me on the cheek once. "Goodnight, dear."

"'Night, Mother."

With that, she and Father disappeared into their cabin. I dug my room key out of my pocket and started to open the door to my own cabin, but stopped when I realized that I wasn't ready to go to bed yet. After the emotionally traumatic dinner I had just suffered through, I felt empty and lonely and sad. I didn't want to be alone right now; I wanted to be where other people were.

So I went up to the top deck and sat down near the railing. By the main pool, the band was still playing, and the dance floor was more crowded than ever with people in bathing suits dancing by dim neon lights. The bar was pretty busy, too, and it seemed like everyone but me had a drink in their hand. From my spot far away, set way back in the shadows, I watched the party unfolding without me as all the happy voices blurred into one, with the cheerful reggae music playing on in the background.

It was very dark outside and hard to see at first, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I eventually spotted Bella in the midst of the crowd on the dance floor. She was still in her blue sundress, her hair down and wild as she danced like a nymph out of the Greek myths I used to read as a child. Renee was there, too, re-enacting cheesy disco dance moves from the seventies, while Phil sat on a lounge chair by the pool, laughing and drinking beer as he watched his wife and his daughter dancing. But my brain only noted them in a peripheral sort of way: all at once, I was too distracted by Bella to pay any attention to anyone else.

She had looked so plain and boring at dinner; brooding quietly at my side, she had been all too easy to forget. But now, as she whirled and twirled in complete abandon like some kind of gypsy dancer, with her dress spinning out around her and her hair falling in her face, there was something captivating about her - some undeniable spark that had not been there before. At dinner, she had curled in on herself, silent and self-conscious. Now, dancing, she was in her own world; she was perhaps the only person I had ever seen truly dance like there was no one watching. There was so much freedom and joy and release in the way she danced that, even though she wasn't dancing _well_, per se, she was fun to watch. In fact, it was impossible to look away.

At least, it was for me.

I was still watching when she and her mother stepped off the dance floor, laughing and falling all over each other as they stumbled over to where Phil sat waiting for them. He handed them their drinks, and then the three of them headed for the glass doors that lead to the elevator.

I watched them go with a sinking feeling deep in my gut, inexplicably wishing that I could follow. The Dwyers were not charming - they were not educated or sophisticated or worldly in any way. But you could tell just by watching them that no matter where they were, no matter what they were doing, they had a good time.

I envied them that.

Throughout all the years I spent moving from school to school (repeating the same cycle of being first the new kid, then the weird kid, then finally the kid that everyone hates over and over again), what got me through was my own confidence in myself. I wasn't cool or funny or good at sports, and I had no idea how to flirt with girls or make a friend, but I was smart. I knew math and science and history and art and literature and a little bit of Spanish. I knew the stock market, I understood how our American government worked, I was fluent in French, I had taught myself basic computer programming back in middle school, I was an accomplished pianist, and I could take apart and rebuild just about any household electronic device. I had devoted my entire life so far to educating myself in every subject, to learning everything there was to know.

But on prom night last year, when she had stood there in that dark bedroom with a blunt in her hand, Tanya had been right: I still didn't know how to have a good time.

That's something you can't sit down and learn; no amount of poring over textbooks and manuals could ever teach you how to be happy. That happiness, that natural joy, is something deep inside yourself that you just have to be born with. And the more I watched it shining through in all the people around me, the more I worried that I had never had it at all, and probably never would.

So it was with a heavy heart that I turned my back on the party on deck and headed back to my cabin alone. As I lay in bed that night and tried to sleep, I comforted myself with the knowledge that when I woke up in the morning, I would be in Cannes, France.

_See? Your dreams are finally coming true. You have nothing to be sad about. You should be overjoyed._

But I didn't feel overjoyed. In the still, silent, empty darkness of my room, I just felt alone.

**A/N: Sorry about this chapter. I know it was loooong, and sort of boring and sad, but it's necessary for later on. The story starts to pick up in the next chapter. Yay!**

**Anyway, I would just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has reviewed so far. I love each and every review I get; they make my day. Any and all feedback, good or bad, is very much appreciated, and if you haven't yet, please leave a review! It doesn't have to be terribly long or detailed or anything, just a little note so I know how I'm doing so far. I would love to know what you think.**

**Also, I'm starting college this weekend, so I don't really know how much time/inspiration I'll have to devote to writing from here on out. I certainly hope that I'll still have time and energy for working on this story while I'm in school, because I'm really attached to it already. I'll try my best to keep up with it. If for some reason you don't hear from me for a while, check my profile for updates, I guess.**

**So, yeah... I'll just wrap up this hugely long A/N by saying that I love you all, and I hope to be posting the next chapter of this little story soon!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N: This chapter is freakishly long, partly to make up for the absurd wait (I am SO SORRY about that, by the way) and partly because this story needs to move along a little faster. You have been warned.**

**Chapter Six**

On the morning of Cannes, I set an alarm on my iPhone to go off at six-thirty, but I was so jet-lagged and drained that I slept through it for a good ten minutes. Gradually becoming aware of the annoying ringtone repeating itself over and over again on an endless loop, I finally woke up just enough to reach over and hit "snooze," and then I promptly rolled over and went back to sleep.

Except I didn't really hit "snooze" - I hit the "slide here to turn off alarm" button.

Oops.

I woke up again at a quarter after seven, in a panic. We had to board the smaller boat that would take us into Cannes (Cannes didn't have a port big enough for the cruise ship, so the ship was anchored maybe a quarter of a mile out from the shore) by eight-thirty, which meant that we would have to be down at breakfast by eight to stay on scheduele. In short, I had less than forty-five minutes to get ready.

To make matters worse, I had been so tired the night before that I hadn't set out my clothes for today. I tried to check the weather in Cannes with my iPhone, but a second later, I remembered that I didn't have internet here. Damn. Oh well. It was summer here, too, right? Must be hot. I settled on a pair of madras shorts and a plain white button-down shirt (the fabric was pretty light and cool, and I could roll up the sleeves as necessary).

There was no time for a shower, so I got dressed straight out of bed. Luckily I had showered the night before, right before dinner, so I was fairly clean, but I prefer two showers a day: one when I wake up in the morning and one sometime before bed. I like to start the day fresh and clean, and I can't go to bed without a shower. Otherwise, I feel too sweaty and gross to sleep.

Since I couldn't have my morning shower, I settled for washing my face vigorously twice - once before shaving and once afterwards, just to make sure that I was extra clean. Then there was the matter of my hair.

My hair was, quite frankly, _mad_, and a source of constant frustration for me. Both of my parents were blessed with calm, obedient hair of a mild shade: Father's was a subtle blonde, while Mother's was a cool auburn. My hair was a reddish-brown mass of chaos that would only stay in place with ridiculous amounts of hair product. This morning would be even more of a struggle than usual, since it hadn't been washed in nearly twelve hours.

I fought with my hair for a good ten minutes, going through the usual cycle with extra vigor: comb, mouse, comb, gel, comb, tousle lightly, part, spray. I checked myself in the mirror, using a smaller hand mirror to inspect the back. Done.

Then all I had to do was put on cologne and deodorant and my shoes, collect all the things I would need to have with me for our day trip in Cannes, and then I would be ready to go. I had brought three different colognes with me, and I decided to wear the most floral, summery one; the French do love their fragrances, after all. My Sperries were right where I left them, lying neatly side by side at the foot of my bed. I put my phone and some Euros in my pocket, and then I was ready to go.

Mother fussed at me all the way down to breakfast, because I had apparently put us ten minutes behind scheduele. When we made it down to the casual dining room, though, it wasn't very crowded at all. I checked my watch.

"Mother, we have forty minutes before we have to board!"

"Twenty-five minutes, dear," she corrected me. She headed straight for the corner of the room, by the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and carefully inspected all the tables nearby before sitting down at the cleanest one. "We want to get there a little early, just in case the boat gets full. We wouldn't want to miss our boat, now, would we?"

I rolled my eyes and walked away before I said something that would just embroil me deeper in her irritating conversation.

We wouldn't have time for a nice sit-down breakfast in the nice dining hall, due to all the day trips Mother had planned for us, so we would be having breakfast here, in the more casual dining room, throughout the cruise. The casual dining room was essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet, open from seven to ten for breakfast. I grabbed a plate and began the process of scouring the buffet for some kind of non-greasy, non-goopy, non-frozen-and-thawed food.

It was more difficult than I had expected. The fruit salad looked fresh, so I got some of that and a piece of toast, but most of the other food looked pretty disgusting. I was debating whether or not to get egg whites as well when someone reached around me to grab the biggest chocolate muffin I have ever seen in my life.

"Excuse me," she mumbled, and I recognize the voice. I glanced over at the rude muffin-grabber: it was Bella.

Our eyes locked for a second and then she looked away again, moving on down the buffet. I decided against the egg whites and followed her.

Today she was wearing jean shorts (not cut-offs this time, thankfully) and a thin v-necked shirt, through which I could see a tank top and bra straps. She had pulled her hair back, and the ends of it were dark and curly - only half-dry since her shower this morning, I assumed. Sadly, she had regressed from the heart-shaped diamond studs she had been wearing the night before to a pair of sparkly purple butterfly earrings, which were almost as bad as the ladybug ones. I glanced down at her feet, expecting to see a pair of trashy flip-flops, but found a pair of trashy Converse instead. Oh well. At least I wouldn't have to look at her bright pink toe-nails all day.

"Hello," I said, just for the hell of it.

She glanced over at me again, nervously. Briefly glimpsing her face, I saw that she was wearing much less make-up today: just a little eyeliner and mascara, applied haphazardly. "Hello, Edward. How are you?"

"Fine."

"Cannes today, huh?" She pronounced Cannes like _cans _- as in, the tin cans her family probably ate out of most of the time.

"It's _Cannes_," I said, pronouncing it the correct way.

"What?"

"It's pronounced _con_, not _cans_."

"Oh. Right." She stared down at her plate with great purpose as she doused her food with a generous helping of maple syrup.

I peeked at her plate out of the corner of my eye: it was piled high with a chocolate muffin, a blueberry muffin, a danish, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and a small stack of waffles. Good lord. It was like she had a goddamn deathwish - death by clogged arteries.

"So much for organic foods," I muttered. I hadn't meant for her to hear, but she looked up and blushed immediately.

"I haven't had bacon in _forever,_ okay? I'm on vacation, I can eat what I want," she snapped defensively.

"Of - of course you can. I was just - "

"Whatever," said Bella. With that, she grabbed a fork and stalked off to her table on the other side of the room without giving me a chance to explain.

The rest of breakfast went about as well as it had begun. The labels on the milk cartons were in German, so I grabbed whole milk instead of skim by accident. The fruit salad was mushy and the toast was bland. My thoughts kept returning to the bacon on Bella's plate, crisp and delicious, drenched in maple syrup... The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had only made that snide remark about her big breakfast out of subconscious jealousy. I knew Mother would never let me eat something like that, especially for breakfast. I could already hear her nagging me: "You need _brain food_ early in the morning, dear, not fried strips of pig-fat swimming in grease."

Despite all of Mother's worrying over time and staying on schedule, we ended up finishing breakfast ten minutes early. I felt too tired and sick to eat any more, so I just drank coffee while I waited for my parents to finish eating.

"You shouldn't drink so much coffee, dear," said Mother eventually. "Caffeine is bad for you, especially during your developing years."

I had seen this coming (it was only a matter of time before she found something else to nag me about, after all) and had already come up with a reply. "It's decaf, Mother," I lied smoothly.

"Well." She looked at me over the rim of her own coffee cup with something like disapproval, but apparently couldn't come up with a sturdy enough argument to continue.

When we finally boarded the boat, we were the first ones there. Security guards checked our IDs before we got off the ship, and then we climbed up onto the smaller boat. It was the kind of boat that was built for sightseeing, with two open decks lined with rows of benches. I headed for the top deck.

"Edward, dear, lets sit down below," said Mother. "I don't want the wind to mess up my hair."

"The boat won't go that fast, ma'am. Your hair will be fine," said a helpful crew member nearby. I wanted to hug him.

"Well...alright then..."

So we sat on the top deck. It was a beautiful day, with sunshine and clear blue skies and temperatures in the high seventies (fahrenheit, of course) and a light breeze, just enough to ease the heat of the sun on your face. The ocean was a gorgeous deep blue, and we could see Cannes from here - a collection of picturesque little buildings nestled at the foot of green mountains, with hazy blue-gray mountains rising up in the distance and boats of all shapes and sizes lined up along the shore.

Twenty minutes later, the boat was full of passengers babbling excitedly in various languages and dialects as we traveled inland. It was a slow, luxurious boat ride, with the French riviera on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. The boat docked at the port and tourists spilled out into Cannes like enthusiastic, slightly sunburned ants. We had nearly forty minutes to kill before our tour bus was supposed to arrive, so Mother and Father and I wandered around town for a while, away from our fellow cruise-goers who were still milling around the port, snapping picture after picture of the sea on their plastic disposable cameras.

First, we strolled along the boardwalk where dozens and dozens of smaller boats and yachts were docked, Father explaining the special features of each one and estimating their value. We eventually moved away from the port, walking down streets that took us farther inland, not headed for anywhere in particular; here, just a walk down the street offered a picturesque view. I had always thought that Hollywood's notion of France, with its green vines snaking up the sides of stucco houses, was just an idealized daydream, but here, it was real. Cannes was as beautiful as all my wild imaginings of it had been - or perhaps even more beautiful.

We stopped to buy drinks from a few street vendors. As usual, it was up to me to execute the transaction, but now that we were in France, I didn't have a problem with that. I bought our drinks and then chatted with the street vendor in French for a while. The street vendor could tell I was American by my accent, but once he realized I spoke French so well, he was extremely friendly and outgoing. He ignored a few other tourists waiting in line behind us to talk to me for a while longer; he talked a lot about boats (I didn't catch much of that), and then he recommended a few restaurants and cafes and bars nearby. I told him that I appreciated his help, but we would only be in town for a few hours and probably wouldn't have time to go to any of those places. He said he was sorry we couldn't stay longer, that we should come back again soon and spend more time here.

"_Cannes est une ville magnifique_," said the street vendor fervently.

I agreed, and then we left him to wait on more customers. As I handed Mother and Father their drinks, they seemed to regard me with a newfound respect.

We headed back to the port to meet our tour bus. By the time we got back, the bus had already arrived and was almost completely full - Mother, Father, and I had to take what we could get, and we ended up sitting near the back. The seats were divided up in twos, so my parents sat together and I sat alone, across the aisle from them. A few minutes later, the balding driver and an old, silver-haired French lady boarded the bus.

"We are miss-ing three of our tour mem-_bers_," announced the lady in halting English, through a heavy French accent. "We will be wait-ing for them for a few moments more."

A rumble of complaint echoed through the tour bus. As the minutes ticked by, passengers whispered in each other's ears with scowls on their faces, pointing to watches and worrying about time. Then, finally, the French lady exclaimed, "There you are!" as three more people boarded the bus.

It was the Dwyers.

"Oh, dear God," I heard Mother murmur, while Father groaned and rubbed his eyes.

I had almost forgotten about them, as I hadn't seen them since my little tiff with Bella at breakfast. I hadn't noticed them on the boat, but maybe they had been sitting on the lower deck. If they were as late this morning as they were now, they had probably been forced to sit down below.

"'Hello, hello. Take a seat, please, we are running behind on our schedule," said the French lady grudgingly, pronouncing the _ch_ in _schedule_, the way a British person might. Her English teachers must have been British.

The Dwyers shuffled their way down the narrow bus aisle, casting sheepishly apologetic smiles right and left as they went. Phil and Renee found a pair of empty seats together near the front, leaving Bella to stare blankly around the bus, searching for an empy seat.

I looked around frantically and realized, with a strange combination of horror and excitement, that the empty seat beside me was the only one left.

Bella seemed to realize this in the exact same moment that I did. Her big brown eyes landed first on the empty seat at my side, and then shifted to me, and we stared right at each other over the crowded seats between us for what felt like a full minute, but was really only the length of a heartbeat. One heavy, painful heartbeat bursting with anticipation.

She opened her mouth to say something and took a step towards me. And then I heard a voice behind me.

"There is an empty place here," said a man in a thick German accent. "You can sit next to me."

A relieved smile split across Bella's face, lighting up her eyes like the breaking dawn. "Thank you so much," she said earnestly. And then she stumbled down the aisle, moving right past me to sit with the German guy.

The French lady took roll once more quickly, and then the bus was off, bumping along the narrow streets of Cannes. I stared out the window at all the beautiful buildings and scenary passing us by, all the places I had always dreamed of, but I wasn't really seeing any of it. I was listening to the conversation that was going on behind me.

"What is your name?" said the German man.

"Bella. Bella Swan. And you?"

"I am Khalil. It is very nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, too," said Bella brightly. "Khalil - that's an interesting name."

"Yes, yes, my parents are very strange." Khalil laughed. "Your name is interesting as well. It means beautiful, yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, and I could practically hear her blushing. "It's..."

"It is perfect. For you, I mean."

Oh God. He was really laying it on thick, wasn't he?

"Khalil, you are talking too much," said yet another voice. Jesus, how many Germans were back there?

"No, no, he's fine. You're fine."

"This is Oskar. He is always talking too much as well." More laughter, and Oskar muttered something to Khalil in German. "And the girl there, that is Katrin."

"Hi," said Bella.

"Hello," said another girl - Katrin, I assumed.

"You are English, or American?" said Oskar.

"American."

"From L.A.?" said Khalil.

"Oh, no," Bella laughed. "I'm from Kentucky. You probably don't - "

"Oh, yes. Kentucky Fried Chicken!"

"Yes. Exactly." She giggled.

"There is a song about you also," said Oskar, very seriously.

"What do you mean?"

"_Push me up against the wallll_," sang Oskar in strangely perfect English, "_young Kentucky girl in a push-up braaaa... _You have heard it?_"_

I had no idea what he was talking about, but apparently, Bella did. "Oh, yeah," she said, "'Scar Tissue.' You know the Red Hot Chili Peppers?"

"Oh, yes," said Khalil. "We enjoy the Red Hot Chili Peppers very much. We saw their concert in Germany."

"Khalil enjoys the Backstreet Boys as well," added Oskar.

"No, no. I only enjoyed the Backstreet Boys when I was a young child."

"He is lying, Bella. Justin Timberlake is his favorite Backstreet Boy."

"Justin Timberlake is not a Backstreet Boy!" said Khalil.

"You see," said Oskar wisely, "he enjoys the Backstreet Boys."

The French lady finally got her microphone working and she stood at the front of the bus, talking about Cannes as we drove through the city. After a while, the narrow two-lane roads turned into a highway as we sped along towards the perfume factory we were supposed to tour. I focused on the words she was saying and the soft lilt her accent lent to her voice instead of on Bella's conversation with the Germans, which was infuriating me, for some reason.

_You're just mad because they're making friends with Bella instead of you, when you are far more European than she will ever be_, I told myself. _You're just a little jealous, that's all. It's perfectly natural. It will pass._

Of course. That's all it was. It had nothing to do with the fact that there were two open seats, one beside the German stranger and one beside me, and Bella had picked the German over me. I wasn't jealous of the Germans, surely. Why would I be? Shouldn't I be glad that somebody else got saddled with her, for once? Shouldn't I be glad that I wouldn't have to have another labored conversation with her, which would inevitably end with her getting offended and me feeling awkward and self-conscious? Yes. I should be glad.

But I wasn't.

The perfume factory was boring. Another French woman speaking cloudy English led us through a few select rooms of the factory, explaining the chemical process of creating the perfume and bragging about how fifty of the two hundred perfume factories in the world were in this once French town, they had the best flowers and the best perfume designers, blah blah blah... It was definitely a tour intended for women, and I say that as a man who owns at least five different colognes and chooses between them according to time, place, and season.

After the tour, the French lady led us to a room full of all different kinds of perfumes and colognes and various other scented bath and body products, at "factory-direct prices," according to our tour guide. We men hung back near to the door to wait as mass chaos broke out among the women.

Mother shoved her way to the front of the line, of course, but she was indecisive, trying out sample after sample of perfume while other women waited behind her impatiently. Father and I stood side by side against the wall, waiting for her in silence.

Presently, Father said, "If you want any cologne, you'd better go ahead and tell your mother now."

I shook my head. I didn't want any cologne. My eyes kept darting over to the corner of the room, where Bella was laughing and talking with the German kids while her mom inspected different soaps, and all I wanted was to be somewhere else - anywhere but here, in fact.

"I think I'm gonna go outside for a minute," I said to Father. "Get some air."

He nodded solemnly and went back to watching Mother, like a loyal old hounddog watches its master.

I found my way upstairs and out the door, doubling back the way our tour guide had led us, and stepped outside in the bright sunshine. Unfortunately, I wasn't alone: sitting on a ledge nearby, smoking a cigarette and checking his phone, was none other than the great Phil Dwyer.

"Oh, hey, Edward!" said Phil, looking up and grinning at me. He patted the stone ledge he was sitting on. "Have a seat, son."

I racked my brain for some kind of excuse not to, but couldn't come up with one. So, with a resigned sigh, I shrugged and did as I was told.

"So you escaped, too, huh?" he said conversationally. "I don't blame ya. Too much _female_ in there. Gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"You smoke?" said Phil, holding out a half-empty pack of cigarettes to me.

"Oh, no."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm not really a fan of lung cancer, but thanks anyway."

He laughed his cackling laugh and slid the pack of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket. "Boy, you sure are a smart one, ain't ya? Anybody ever tell you that?"

I shrugged.

Without warning, Phil slid one arm around my shoulders and pulled me in closer in a manly, conspiratorial sort of way. "Listen, Ed - can I call you Ed?"

"Um, actually - "

"Well, listen, son: man to man, I just want to thank you for all you've done for Bella so far."

I stared blankly at him as my brain scrambled desperately to figure out what he meant, to no avail.

"She's not technically my daughter - step-daughter, ya know - but I think of her as my own, and I appreciate you treatin' her so well and all." When he saw the confused look on my face, he explained, "She told us all about how nice you were that day in Barcelona - takin' her to lunch and buyin' her that bracelet and all."

Dumbfounded, I could only splutter helplessly for a moment. "Well, I - I didn't - "

"This was supposed to be our trip, ya know," he went on, talking over me, as usual. "Just me and Renee. Our honeymoon. But then...Bella... These past few months have been pretty rough on her, so we decided to bring her with us. To cheer her up, ya know? We thought a change of scenery would do her good."

I nodded. "I know how that is," I whispered, almost inaudibly.

But Phil heard. "Yeah," he said sympathetically. "But she's been havin' a real hard time. She could really use a friend right now."

I didn't know what to say. I just sat there in silence as I was engulfed by yet another set of mixed emotions: sadness, regret...guilt...

"You know what? Your folks may be a little stuck up, but you're a good kid," said Phil, ruffling my hair affectionately the way my own father never had. "I believe there's hope for you yet."

Before I could even begin to think of how to respond to that, the doors of the perfumerie opened and tourists spilled out, the women chatting and bragging about their purchases to each other while their husbands lagged behind with their wives' bags in hand. Bringing up the tail end of the group were Renee, Bella, and the German kids; Bella was laughing as she showed Oskar a lemon-shaped bar of soap, and Renee kept glancing back at her daughter with a quietly pleased, knowing look.

"Good talk, Ed," said Phil gruffly. He clapped me once on the shoulder and then walked away, pushing through the mass of people to make it back to the rest of his odd little family.

I watched him go, watched him peck Renee once on the lips and then turn to smile at Bella and ruffle her hair. She tried to duck away from him, lost her balance, and almost fell down - but Phil caught and steadied her at the last second. Phil and Renee laughed at her and Bella stuck her tongue out at them, a pale flush lighting up her face.

Then, by pure chance, she happened to turn and look my way, and through the crowd of excited tourists, our eyes met. She was still smiling, and though I knew she wasn't smiling for me, in that moment, it was so easy to believe that she was. In fact, all at once, I was sure of it.

But then she turned away, saying something to her mother that made them both laugh while Phil just crossed his arms and glared indignantly. And I sat there alone on the bench and looked on from a distance. I wasn't in on the joke.

-

After the parfumerie, we filed back onto the bus and the tourguide babbled on and on about the medieval village we were about to visit as the bus merged onto the highway and we headed further inland. These stretches of highway with the occasional road sign here and there, with scraggly deep green foliage growing up on either side of the road, were familiar to me. It was only when I caught a glimpse of the coast through the break in the trees that I could realize we were really here.

I tuned out the tour guides heavy French accent, choosing to entertain myself by staring out the window at the passing scenary instead. Across the aisle, Mother and Father were listening attentively, but they were the only ones: up and down the bus people were listening to iPods, reading books and magazines and newspapers, scolding loud children. Behind me, Oskar and Khalil were bickering in German while Bella took a video of the view out the window with an old, much-abused digital camera.

"Bella," I heard Renee laugh from a few rows up. "What are you doing?"

Bella pursed her lips and stared intently at the viewfinder on her camera. For a moment, it seemed like she was purposely ignoring her mother - but then she said simply, "I want to remember."

We got off the highway and the bus eased its way through the narrow streets of what was obviously a very old French village. We passed beautiful little stucco houses, painted in subtle pastel shades with green vines and pink flowers climbing up the shutters. Mother and Father were muttering about how much "a little house like that" could sell for in today's market, but I tuned them out and listened to the French tourguide instead.

The village sat high on a hilltop, a scattering of tiny structures squatting one on top of the other, encircled by a thick, heavy-looking wall that wrapped around the hill like a solid belt of rock. The bus began to climb the steep hill that led to the parking lot, and the tourguide grabbed a hand railing to steady herself as she explained the history of the village. Much of it had been destroyed and rebuilt, she said. Now all the little rooms where people lived and worked hundreds of years ago had been converted into shops and boutiques where tourists bought overpriced scarves and earrings. Across the aisle from me, Mother shook her head in disapproval, silently mourning the spread of American materialism to a European sanctuary of long-lost culture and sophistication.

The bus stopped in a parking lot, and mass chaos broke out as everyone clambored to get out of the bus at once. The tour guide yelled over the commotion that she would lead the way because, though we could see the village from here, the route from the parking lot to the village itself was not obvious and we idiot tourists were likely to get lost. Everyone quieted down then, waiting patiently as the tour guide shared a brief exchange with the bus driver in French. Then the tour guide turned back to us, smirked in satisfaction, and said in English, "Zis way!"

We followed her across a road and along the side of another, down a narrow sidewalk lined with quaint little shops and houses. The tour guide talked as she walked.

"It iz very easy for you to get lostif you are not pay-ing atten-zion," she said. "Zere are many roads zis way which all look ze same to you, no? You must look for ze small details to 'elp you. For in-stanz, when you are com-ing back to ze bus, look for ze post off-ice. If you are not walking by ze post off-ice, you are go-ing ze wrong way. You see?"

But her voice was just background noise to me now - my mind was in another world, swallowed whole by the view of the village from here, with the beautiful landscape of southern France all laid out below. I felt like I had stepped into one of the postcards I had worshipped and memorized over the past few months. I couldn't even begin to realize that I was finally, actually, really and truly here.

We walked through a small modern-day village, where the smell of fresh bread drifted through the open door of a bakery and a few college-age guys played _petanque_ in an open square of hardened dirt nearby. Couples and a few men in suits sat outside a cafe, watching us warily over the rims of their coffee cups. The tourists snapped pictures on their digital cameras nonstop, and by the time we finally reached the medieval village, I thought I might snap someone's neck the next time one of those obnoxious flashes went off.

The tourguide led us down a narrow side-road and into the medieval village. The ancient streets were cobbled and impossibly narrow - our little group thinned out into a single-file, sometimes two-by-two, line, and it was difficult to inch by the other tourists who passed us. The streets were so rough and uneven that it was difficult to keep your footing in some places; farther up ahead, I saw Bella stumble and almost fall, but one of the German boys caught her arm at the last second. I was beginning to think this was normal for her, though.

We walked through the village for about half an hour, stopping here and there for the tour guide to share some historical fact with us and glancing in at all the little shops and boutiques that the ancient buildings now housed. A few people stopped to get ice cream, and it looked pretty good to me, but I could tell by the look on Mother's face that she wouldn't approve. So we kept walking and eventually we came out of the village on the other side.

On this side of the village were wide stone steps leading up to a sort of overlook. Great stone walls surrounded the overlook on all sides, and you could walk up to the edge and look out over southern France. You could see all the way to the coast.

Mother and Father and I stepped up onto the overlook, which was almost empty except for a handful of our fellow cruise-mates. A hispanic family of five stood in one corner, speaking rapid Spanish and pointing to the mountains rising up on all sides of us. Nearby, Phil and Renee stood close together, whispering to each other. On the other side of the overlook, Bella was alone, staring silently into the distance with her arms folded across her chest. A light breeze blew her hair in her face, but her solemn expression never faltered. The Germans were nowhere to be found.

And though I had put his voice out of mind all afternoon, all at once, I remembered what Phil had said to me earlier: "_She's been havin' a real hard time. She could really use a friend right now_."

It sounded so strange to me... I never would have expected Bella, who was sweet and outgoing and naive in the tradition of so many all-American girls-next-door before her, to ever be at a loss for friends. But as she stood there alone, something about the set of her mouth, the look in her eyes was so gentle - so full of tender warmth and sadness, a melancholy sort of longing. I recognized that look and it tore a hole right through me.

I wanted to walk up to her, and for a second I thought that I could - or would, even. I saw the possibilites pan out in my mind, and like a dream, I saw myself moving over to her, more floating than walking, touching the small of her back, or her shoulder, or her arm, and offering some clever words of comfort, and she would smile up into my face with shining eyes and, maybe for the first time in my whole life, I would make a very private and very personal connection with another human being.

But then she turned away and went back the way she had come, shuffling past me with her head down, and I missed my chance.

We walked back down through the village, our steps heavy and weary. It was well past lunch and sweltering; I was starving. The only food source nearby was a crepe booth, where a man armed with a spatula and a special skillet made traditional crepes to order. Mother told me to order three crepes for the three of us while she and Father went back to the bus.

So I found myself waiting in line behind a group of giggling French girls, with the hot sun beating down on my back. I was hungry and irritated (my mother and my own distinct lack of social skills had put me in a bad mood) and I didn't feel like standing in line. But the girls were blonde and blue-eyed with smooth, evenly tanned skin, dressed up in cute little tank tops and dresses - beautiful and classically European - and they kept stealing glances at me over their shoulders and whispering to each other. This went on for a good five minutes as the man fried crepe after crepe on the skillet and slowly I began to realize that this was it - this was my chance. Clearly, these girls were interested in me; all I had to do was take the first step.

_You can do it_, I told myself. _You can do it. Be brave._

I was about to clear my throat and introduce myself in French when I happened to look up and see Bella coming towards me out of the corner of my eye. She looked sort of pissed off and she was headed straight for me, and for a moment, a thrill of fear ran through my veins. Was she mad at me? Had I done something wrong?

On the contrary, she didn't seem aware of me at all; she stalked right past me to stand behind me in line, crossing her arms over her chest and slouching backwards with her eyes narrowed in annoyance. The line inched forward and I felt awkward.

"Hi," I said to her finally.

Her dark eyes darted up to meet mine briefly in acknowledgement. "Hey," she muttered with little enthusiasm.

And then the words just came out: "So, um, where'd your German friends go?"

"What?" said Bella. She raised her eyebrows at me.

Oh, God. Now she probably thought I was stalking her or something - watching her with the Germans. How creepy. "I was just - I was just, wondering - because, you know, I saw you with, um..."

Jesus. I just kept making things worse for myself. Why couldn't I just shut the hell up already?

Luckily, before I could dig my own grave any deeper, the French girls standing in line in front of us chose that exact moment to interrupt.

"_Excuse moi_," said one of them delicately, and Bella and I both turned to stare at her in surprise. "Are you English?"

"Oh, no," I said. "American."

"Oh," said the French girl. She giggled, blushed, and relayed the information to her friends in French, prompting both of them to giggle and blush as well. Turning back to us, she winked at Bella and said, "Your girlfriend, she is very lucky, no?"

"Oh, she's - she's not my girlfriend," I blurted out.

Bella and I both glanced at each other, cringed, and looked away. Though I would have thought it impossible moments ago, I had found a way to actually make things worse. God.

The French girls seemed oblivious to our discomfort. "Well," said the one girl - the English speaker - flirtatiously, "zat is even bet-_ter_."

Their crepes were ready then, so the French girls paid and took their food and left. Bella and I ordered three cheese crepes each and I guess the man thought we were together, just like the French girls had, because he made them all in one batch and then expected me to pay for all of it. Bella jumped in and tried to explain with choppy English and hand gestures that our orders were separate; the man stared at her blankly until I explained in French. We both paid and Bella started walking off without me before I had gotten my crepes into a manageable stack.

I followed her down the little dirt path that led out of the village and through the heart of the tiny town below. We walked past the bakery and the cafe, past the college boys playing _petanque _(a few of them leered at Bella as she passed and made cat-calls in French, and though she must have had no idea what they were saying, she still got embarrassed and shuffled her feet anyway), to the place where the street forked into two separate paths. I figured the left fork would be faster, since I knew the bus was parked about a block away on the left, so I took the left fork while Bella took the right. She was walking a lot faster than me without speaking to me, so she didn't notice that we had gone separate ways at first; when she did, she stopped and called out to me, "Edward! You're going the wrong way!"

I stopped in my tracks and glanced down the narrow road I was on. From here, I could see the parking lot where I knew the bus was parked. I turned back to Bella, frowning as I squinted against the sun shining behind her, lighting up her crazy mass of hair like a halo. "No, I'm not," I yelled back.

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not," I insisted. "I can see the bus from here."

"Yeah, but you can't get to it. You have to go up this road to get to it."

For a moment, I just stared at her. I was supposed to go to the right to get to the left? She couldn't be serious.

"That doesn't make sense," I said.

"Yes, it does," snapped Bella, her voice brittle with impatience. "The tourguide explained it to us earlier, remember? She said you have to pass the post office. If the road doesn't take you by the post office, you're going the wrong way."

"I don't remember her saying that."

"Well, she did."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, Edward - "

"Well, that just doesn't make sense. I mean, I can see the goddamn bus from here, so..."

"Fine, then, Edward. That's just fine," growled Bella, and I was startled to see that she was suddenly furious. "You think you're so smart, you think you're always right - "

"No, I don't."

"You do! And you know what? I get it. Okay? I get it."

"Wha - ?" I started to say, but there was no stopping her now.

"You think I'm stupid," she ranted. "You think I'm just some redneck hillbilly who can barely read and write, much less appreciate European _art_ and _culture_ and I'm so _tacky_ and _stupid_ and I just wound up here by accident somehow. You think I'm an _idiot_. Well, I have news for you, asshole: just because you were nice clothes and live in a nice house and went to a nice school doesn't make you _smart_ or _cultured_. _You're_ the idiot."

Unfortunately, I was so stunned that all I could do was gape at her like - well, like an idiot.

"So that's just fine. You just go whatever damn way you please, since you're always right and I'm just some clueless hick from Kentucky. Don't listen to me. By all means, you do what _you_ think is best."

When I finally found my voice, it sounded raspy and wavering - not all the firm, assured voice of authority I had hoped for. "Bella," I choked out, "I think - "

"Oh, just fucking save it, Edward," said Bella. "Because you know what? I don't care. I really, truly, honestly, do not give a _shit_ what you fucking _think_ - especially about me."

With that, she turned on her heel and stalked off in the opposite direction, leaving me standing alone with a stack of crepes in one hand, staring after her like the arrogant son-of-a-bitch that I am - too proud to admit that I'm lost, much less ask for help or directions, much less call her name and hope she would come back for me. And the worst part was that even though I didn't remember the tourguide saying the thing about the post office and even though I _could_ see the goddamn bus from here, I knew, deep down, that Bella was right. I was arrogant, and I was lost, and I was too stupid to know when to ask for help and when to accept it.

And the last thing I thought of as I watched her back finally disappear around a corner was what Phil had said earlier, about how Bella could really use a friend right now. And I remembered how I had wanted to go to her up there on the overlook, how I had wanted to be that friend. How I had failed.

And I had believed her when she said she didn't give a shit what I thought. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was what I liked about her.

_Too bad she hates my guts now_, I thought as I doubled back, following the way Bella had gone. _Oh well. I guess I can't blame her for that._

But I _could_ try to change it. And, as I walked through a small French village alone, with Bella's words still fresh in my mind, I resolved that I would.

**Footnotes:**

**1. petanque: a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (or jack); normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on grass, sand or other surfaces; originated in southern France. Similar games are bocce and bowls.**

**2. crepes: a type of very thin pancake, usually made from wheat flour; served with a variety of fillings.**

**[Definitions from Wikipedia (dot) org.]**

**A/N: I am SO SORRY this chapter took so long! I've started college since the last chapter was out, and my internet hasn't been working (I literally just got it fixed last night), so between getting adjusted to school and being without a laptop periodically (it was "repaired" three different times), it was close to impossible to get this chapter finished and posted. I am not exaggerating when I say that most of this chapter was written in bits and pieces on my iPhone whenever I had a few minutes to spare, and then merged together later on. **

**So I apologize for this chapter - to put it bluntly, I know it's crappy, but I did the best I could under the circumstances and I figured you'd rather have a so-so update now than a pretty good one in another week or two. I will do my best to get the next chapter out in a much more timely manner. :]**


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